social watch

Based on notes from Ian Percy*

The process of ministerial discussions around aid effectiveness that produced the Paris Declaration in 2005 and continued in Accra 2008 with the Accra Agenda for Action will have a new High Level Forum (HLF4) in Busan, Korea, in 2011. An intergovernmental Working Party (WP-EFF), with the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and the World Bank acting as secretariat, is organizing the Busan meeting. Social Watch is part of the coordinating group of the BetterAid coalition, an alliance of civil society organizations (CSOs) that tries to influence this process and shift the discourse from aid effectiveness to development effectiveness.

A declaration signed by nearly 200 civil societey organizations, networks and trade unions around the world demand world leaders of the G20 gathering in Seoul, Korea to listen to their citizens instead of to the bankers and urge them to make concrete progress towards the introduction of an internationally coordinated financial transactions tax (FTT).

An event organized by Social Watch, CIDSE, Heinrich Boell Foundation and NGLS entitled "Raiding the public till: The financial crises and the MDGs" will address these challenges and emphasize the imperative of harnessing the aid, finance, debt and trade dimensions of “global partnerships for development” (known as MDG 8) to support national strategies and contribute to achievement of all the other goals.

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13, 2010 (IPS) - When the United Nations hosts a summit meeting of world leaders next September to assess the current state of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it is expected to single out one of the major "success stories" of the day: a reduction in global poverty.

Source: US Social Forum
Social Watch organized the strategy session "Economic crisis and opportunities to put people first at home and abroad" to identify emerging opportunities to address the economic and financial crisis in ways that advance human rights, social and economic justice and bridge the domestic and international contexts. The event that took place on 24 June 2010 was part of activities within the US Social Forum held in Detroit.

2010 marks the 15th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. To commemorate this and review commitment achieved so far, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) resolved to conduct its 54th session in New York from 1-12 March 2010. The Social Watch network was in New York to present new findings and reports and also partnered with other NGOs to organize parallel civil society events.

Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, spoke at DAWN's Development Debates 2010. The panel organized by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) took place on January 19th 2010 at Mauritius, Africa. It also counted with the participation of Rosalind Petchesky who talked about Gender Identity, Sexuality and Feminism, and Rodelyn Marte that made a presentation on HIV/AIDS and Women.

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