Members of the Alternative Budget Institute (ABI), a consortium of 60 non-governmental organizations led by Social Watch Philippines, called on citizens to vote only for candidates supporting the MDGs. (Photo: ABI-ENVI)

The Philippines needs a post-2015 development agenda that reclaims human rights as the normative framework, especially ensuring the right to education, health and decent work, and addressing the long-standing inequalities, concludes the report 2013 of Social Watch-Philippines. Economic growth averaged 4.7 per cent a year since 2000 in this South Asian country, but only the elites harvested the benefits, while poverty increased to reach more than one of every four Filipinos, says the study.

Palace of the Nation, seat of the Belgian Federal Parliament in Brussels. (Photo: Belgian government)

“International cooperation is in danger. In Europe, which is still the biggest donor in the world, official development assistance fell for the first time since 2007, and Belgium is not an exception. In times of crisis the tendency is for fiscal austerity”. This is the conclusion of the National Cooperation Centre for Development (CNCD-11.11.11) in its contribution to the Social Watch Report 2013.

Living in the Batey Libertad. (Photo: Yspaniola.org)

To put an end to poverty, the authorities in the Dominican Republic must promote the equitable distribution of wealth, broaden and improve the quality of education, health services, employment and social security, and implement policies to help the poorest and most vulnerable people. But, according to civil society organizations in their contribution to the Social Watch Report 2013, the official rhetoric about social investment and human development is contradicting by an economic policy of cutting expenditures and increasing taxes, in accordance with conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

Pro-democratic demonstration in Asunción, in june. (Photo: Decidamos-Paraguay)

“The social contract was broken” in Paraguay by the “parliamentary coup” that ousted President Fernando Lugo on 22 June 2012, informs Decidamos, a campaign for citizen rights, in its contribution to the Social Watch report 2013.
Lugo became president with 41% of the votes, and in 2011, three years into his Administration, he had the approval of 50% of the population.”

Dhaka, capital city of Bangladesh, under the water in 2004. (Photo: EquityBD)

The international community must rule out the “one size fits all” approach and design an “effective sets of goals” needed to ensure a sustainable development, letting the solutions to be defined by each country, recommends the Social Watch coalition in Bangladesh, a nation severely affected by climate change. The new framework must ensure “equity”, “justice”, “the preservation of Mother Earth and the life and livelihood of all human beings,” adds the Bangladeshi contribution to the Social Watch Report 2013.