Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 338 - November 8, 2018

Issue 338 - November 8, 2018
Social Watch reports
Spotlight report on the 2030 Agenda
 
   
 

France fails to synergize

   
 

In France, a High Level Steering Committee for the implementation of the SDGs held its first meeting in April 2018 as a forum to debate and collectively build, with public and private actors, a 'roadmap' to be issued in the fall of 2019. This move was applauded by the ATD Fourth World Movement for being inclusive, but also criticized as “coming late”.
ATD Fourth World finds “very little effort to synergize the various objectives, and “not a major concern” for poverty in France.
The Movement hopes “that the enforcement of each SDG reaches the poorest, on the national territory as well as in the international development cooperation by France” and it campaigns in particular on the issue of unemployment (currently 9 percent in France) demanding “access to work as a right, just as the right to education or the right to social security”. Read more

   
   
 

Colonial extractivism at the root of power asymmetry in Kenya

   
 
 

In Kenya the NGO SODNET reports that “the widening gap between the rich and the poor continues to undermine confidence in the institutions of democratic economic governance and, alongside it, the imperative of social cohesion as a condition for sustainable development”. According to Edward Oyugi, J. Ocholla and Mwaura Kaara “Kenya still lives uneasily with a colonial past and its legacy of unequal development, arising from acute asymmetry of power relations associated with the continuation of a colonial system that had merely engaged a strategic retreat gear against the false belief that the post-colonial dispensation marked a systemic transformation of the colonial societies.” The report concludes that democracy and sustainable development remain “a dream” because “the culture and practice of corruption has grown deep and enduring roots in Kenyan society and become endemic” and allows for concentration of wealth within the ruling circles. The political and bureaucratic leadership benefit from it “and the existing governance institutions either kick the can down the road or lack both the will and capacity to stop them from doing so”. Read more

 

   
   
 

SDG 2. Approaching SDG 2 through the Right to Food and Nutrition

   
 

Rather than reaching the goal of ending hunger that is called for in SDG 2, the world is on track to increased and more exacerbated food insecurity. Since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, global rates of food insecurity have increased – with some 815 million people facing hunger and malnourishment, 1 and it is estimated that this number will continue to increase. The present understanding of the root causes of hunger and malnutrition and of the policy solutions that can support long-term, structural change, is not sufficiently up to speed with the kind of shifts that need to take place.
A radical shift is needed. Eradicating hunger requires a radical shift from dominant food system models and development paradigms, towards addressing the food system as a whole, and creating enabling public policies that address key issues affecting food insecurity and malnutrition. Mainstream monitoring of food security and nutrition fails to address the critical questions around the social control of the food system, and in particular natural resources, and proposes solutions based on the current industrial model of production that feeds a global, and inherently unequal economy. Read more

 

   
 
Social Watch publishes country reports 2018

Social Watch coalitions around the world are contributing their assessments and reports to the global Social Watch report 2018 on the national implementation of the 2030 Agenda. While circumstances and capabilities are unique in each country, common threads emerge: Inequalities, often exacerbated by the international policy framework, are not being reduced, poverty is underestimated or hidden but not eradicated, sustainability is sacrificed to extractivism.

The Social Watch national platforms are independent coalitions of civil society organizations struggling for social and gender justice in their own countries. The Social Watch network has been publishing since 1996 yearly reports on how governments implement their international commitments to eradicate poverty and achieve equality between women and men.

   
   
 

Desperately Seeking Indicators: different players, different priorities

   
 

Three years into the implementation of the 2030, concerns continue about stalled indicators, missing indicators and proliferating and potentially competing data sources, which makes it difficult to assess progress. Initiatives abound in the shifting terrain of the generation, validation and use of data to satisfy the demands of a growing market of players. A new working paper by Steve MacFeely and Bojan Nastav, titled “You say you want a [data] Revolution': A proposal to use unofficial statistics for the SDG Indicator Framework”, underlines the urgency of establishing a framework agreement for getting control of the dynamic but essentially fragmented data “revolution”. Read more

 

   
   
 

UN poverty expert warns against tsunami of unchecked privatisation

   
 

Widespread privatisation of public goods in many societies is systematically eliminating human rights protections and further marginalising those living in poverty, according to a new report.
Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, criticised the extent to which the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and even the UN itself have aggressively promoted widespread privatisation of basic services, without regard to the human rights implications or the consequences for the poor. He also criticised human rights groups for not responding strongly enough to the resulting challenges. Read more

 

   
   
 

Global Financial Crisis, its aftermath and policy response

   
 

The aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) which began in 2008 is still with us. The widespread macroeconomic downturn which followed the GFC's outbreak has been contained and growth of GDP has been restored, though not at rates which have repaired earlier losses.
The post-crisis reform agenda is still being put in place but without a consensus as to the relative importance of different causes for the GFC and thus as to the importance of the different reforms required.
The seriousness of the crisis in the autumn of 2008 had several manifestations. Global credit markets were no longer functioning. GDP in the United States was falling at an annual rate of nearly 7 per cent. The S&P index of US stock prices had fallen by 40 per cent. Red more

 

   

 

 
SOCIAL WATCH IS AN INTERNATIONAL NGO WATCHDOG NETWORK MONITORING POVERTY ERADICATION AND GENDER EQUALITY
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