The annual United Nations climate treaty conference kicks off in Lima, Peru, against the backdrop of several key events in the climate change arena.

These include the most recent release of the Intergovernmntal Panel on Climate Change's Summary for Policy- Makers relating to the Synthesis Report of its Fifth Assessment Report, the US-China joint announcement of their post-2020 actions on climate change, and the US$9.7 billion pledged to the Green Climate Fund.

The UN Guiding Principles, while not perfect, provide the clearest expression yet of the international community’s expectations of the human rights responsibilities of corporations, including private sector banks. The most notable response by the banking sector to date has been the formation of the Thun Group in 2011 to discuss the implementation of the Principles, and their first discussion paper, launched in 2013.

More than one year from the launch of this paper, and more than three years from the launch of the Guiding Principles themselves, a new study released by BankTrack, “Banking with principles? Benchmarking banks against the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, attempts to assess how banks are doing at implementing the Principles into their own operations, policies and reporting.

Prof. Leonor Briones.

The budget watchdog Social Watch Philippines on Friday criticized the Senate for retaining the new definition of savings in the 2015 budget that it approved, and the possibility of funding for an expense item being declared as savings at any time of the year.

"Such a redefinition can perpetuate the pork barrel system and mechanisms similar to the Disbursement Acceleration Program, both of which have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court," the group said in a statement.

The loss of tax revenues due to international tax evasion and avoidance significantly reduce the funds available to finance policies aimed at fulfilling the human rights of women and girls and gender justice.

Due to the structural nature of gender inequality and its intersection with other categories such as age, race-ethnicity, sexual orientation and income, women in most of societies continue to be overrepresented in the lowest quintiles of the income distribution, continue to be the most responsible  for unpaid and care work, continue to be concentrated in the most precarious and poorly paid jobs, are still a minority in the spaces of representation and leadership in political, labor or territories, still face gender-based violence, human trafficking, and continue to have their sexual and reproductive rights and autonomy limited.

As far as financial issues are concerned, the Third International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) is shaping up to become 2015’s most important summit. If an ambitious global financing framework is not agreed in Addis Ababa next July, the success of the September summit on new Sustainable Development Goals and a post-2015 framework will also be in jeopardy. Even the climate summit in Paris at the end of 2015 risks being undermined. Before the actual FfD negotiations start in January, the UN conducted ‘a substantive informal session’ in New York from 10-13 November, which aimed to launch an open debate on the financing for development issues at stake in Addis.