SOCIAL WATCH E-NEWSLETTER - Issue 116 - January 30, 2013

The government of Uganda has continuously allocated resources to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but its failures in fighting corruption slow down progress, says David Obot, head of the Development Network of Indigenous Voluntary Associations (DENIVA) and main author of the Ugandan civil society contribution to the Social Watch Report 2013. Uganda may reach three of the eight MDGs by 2015. The other goals would be missed, particularly those related to sectors where corruption is highly concentrated. Read more

Chile remains the Latin American country with the best performance in terms of achieving the goals of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, the deep social unrest expressed in the last two years regarding the state of public education and health, environmental depredation by large corporations and, above all, the obvious widening of the gap of inequality, raise questions about what this means in practice for the country.

 

The failure of government policies and programs to address the underlying problems that prevent reaching a fairer society downplays the achievements reported in meeting the goals and makes them still appear to be insufficient. This is part of a development model that is not centered on people and their rights, but on economic growth and natural resources exploitation.
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The crisis of the Congolese economy was due to the fall in copper prices and the oil shock of 1974, followed by the"Zairisation" of the country, and it was reinforced by bad governance and high population growth, which sends every year to the labor market a lot of people of working age.

This crisis was exacerbated by the sack of 1991 and 1993 and the liberation wars of 1996 and 1998. There is great poverty in the country and we do not find the least political will in terms of job creation. Read more

Over sixty national Social Watch coalitions around the world are contributing their assessments and reports to the global Social Watch report 2013, under the overall theme of "Ends and Means." The Social Watch network thus joins the current global discussions around a set of Sustainable Development Goals and on a new development framework to be put in place when the MDGs expire in 2015.

The Social Watch national platforms are independent coalitions of civil society organizations struggling for social and gender justice in their own countries. The Social Watch network has been publishing since 1996 yearly reports on how governments implement their international commitments to eradicate poverty and achieve equality between women and men.