Brazilian development policy underwent a major transformation in the last decade, having the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES, by its acronym in Portuguese) as the great symbol of this process. In 2004 disbursements by the bank were in the order of USD 40 billion, while in 2010 they totaled over USD 168 billion.

This growth by the bank occurred with a clear intention of the Brazilian government. The two main sources of bank financing are the Workers’ Support Fund and the National Treasury, but while the former has a fixed value (40 per cent of the fund), the amount deposited by the Treasury varies from Brazilian Real 43 billion in 2008 to a staggering 376 billion in 2012. However if the rise and importance of the bank in the last decade is unquestionable, the development model chosen raises many doubts.

A woman carrying firewood in Ethiopia. (Photo: LDC Watch)

The ongoing Post-2015 development agenda (including the SDGs) process is still short of prioritising the special needs and challenges of the LDCs and its peoples. The MDGs, albeit minimal in scope, has a dedicated target pertaining to the LDCs under Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development.

Conversely, the proposed new-generation goals in the report by the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) dilute the due special development attention to the LDCs. A stand-alone goal targeting global development partnership for the LDCs is a non-negotiable along with a cross-cutting treatment with specific reference premised upon their special situations and vulnerabilities.

Thousands march against pork barrels. (Photo: VoA)

“The abolition of the pork barrel system should be total” said Leonor Briones, lead convenor Social Watch Philippines, to a Congressional committee in Manila, bringing to legislators the message that hundreds of thousands of people had reaffirmed in the streets during marches against corruption in the previous days.

“Pork barrel” is the popular name of a system that allows members of parliament the direct allocation of budget funds to pet projects in their constituencies. Some “pork barrel amount to the equivalent of four million dollars a year.

The president himself manages a “pork barrel fund” of some 500 million dollars and several items of the Special Purpose Funds (SPF) in the national budget for 2014. “SPFs breed corruption. How can Congress scrutinize the SPF when there is no detail? It is just one chart in the budget documents and one line in the summary papers,” SWP said Briones.

Photo: Ministry of Labor and Social Security (Uruguay).

The open panel on "Progress and Challenges on Tax Justice and Social Justice in Uruguay", put together by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Center of Concern, Social Watch and the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) - all members of the Righting Finance Initiative - together with the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) took place on Friday, August 16, 2013.

Eduardo Brenta, Labour and Social Security Minister and Pablo Ferreri, Director of the Directorate-General for Taxation (DGI) discussed the impact of Uruguay tax and labor polices in terms of redistribution and the future challenges together with academics, feminist and human rights activists.

This historic ILO Convention gives domestic workers the same rights as other workers.

The International Labour Organization’s Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189)comes into force on 5 September 2013, extending basic labour rights to domestic workers around the globe.