Protesting in the streets. (Photo: Ahlulbayt News Agency)

In 2012, the authorities in Bahrain showed little if any readiness to engage with the political opposition and civil society in order to find a fair and sustainable solution to socio-political and socio-economic challenges facing the nation.  If anything, officials intensified their repression of the democratic wishes expressed by a sizable number of people in February 2011.

Sadly, by shunning repeated calls for face to face roundtable negotiations, officials have only succeeded in harming the country's potential, reputation and ranking in international economic, political and social development indices.  This report focuses on the costs to the country's performance on various indicators as well as to the likelihood of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

Jens Martens. (Photo: IISD.)

The UN has launched an extensive worldwide discussion on the new development agenda that is to succeed the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. Jens Martens, long-time observer of international development and environmental policy, cautions in an interview against consultation overkill and calls on NGOs to develop alternatives that go beyond what is currently politically feasible.

In the aftermath of the peoples’ revolutions in the Arab region, an expansion of IMF loan agreements was witnessed in the Arab region; including new loans with Jordan, Morocco, and Yemen, and ongoing negotiations for loans with Tunisia and Egypt. People in the Arab countries face multiple social and economic challenges, including high debt and deficits, a youth unemployment bulge, and deepening inequalities since before the global crisis and the peoples’ uprisings. Today, peoples’ voices in the region are cautioning against the implications of the IMF loans and their austerity conditions. Peoples’ aspirations for a genuinely democratic transition towards social and economic justice are in jeopardy if fiscal adjustment constrains the government’s ability to carry out public investment for the preservation of vital social sectors and essential services, and to create employment, wages and productive sector growth in the real economy.

Bangalore - After independence, we got bureaucracy not democracy, said Bhaskar Rao Gorantla, Research Director of National Social Watch (India). He was addressing a gathering of civil society representatives at a consultation programme organized by the Karnataka Social Watch on administrative reforms.

Listing various structural problems in the administration, he said that although the central and state level administrations have undergone a positive change since independence, the district/local level administrative bodies have not undergone any significant changes.

As a whirlpool, the crisis that has been lasting for the past 5 years has hit Italy hard in 2012.
The country was put under the "technical” government of Mario Monti, who acted as a commissioner and subjected Italy to a shock therapy of austerity policies, similar to the structural adjustment programs imposed by the IMF. While intended to reanimate the economy, it plunged the country into a real recession under the blackmail of two parameters: the "spread" between Italy and Germany, and the Public Debt, which has grown another 10%, reaching 127,3% of the GNP. It is not by chance that the Prime Minister Mario Monti has been International Advisor to Goldman Sachs.

The deterioration of the living conditions of a large part of the Italian population concerned especially the "working poor": in Italy, there are three million, about 15% of the total employed. Eight million Italians live with less than one thousand euro per month. The crisis has seriously damaged the middle class.