Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 187 - October 3, 2014

In a letter to U.S. and EU trade negotiators and finance ministers, 52 civil society groups on both sides of the Atlantic, Global Policy Forum amongst them, have come together to warn that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently under discussion could undermine new financial regulations and potentially create significant risks to the global financial system, as well as to investors and consumers. Despite the experience of the global financial crisis, leaked documents from the confidential TTIP negotiations indicate that current TTIP drafts replicate deregulatory provisions from pre-crisis trade arrangements, in some cases even adding new loopholes, such as the suggestion to introduce investor state dispute settlement provisions. Read more

Last week, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution condemning the activities of vulture funds for their impacts on the capacity of governments to fulfill their human rights obligations.
In a resolution passed with 33 of the votes of members, only 5 countries voting against (United States, Germany, Japan, UK and Czech Republic) and 9 abstentions, the Council held that debt repayment to the aforementioned funds, under predatory abusive conditions, bears a direct negative effect on human rights.   Read more

Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, talks to Equal Times about this crucial moment in the development world on the “post-2015” process currently being discussed in the United Nations? Read more