Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 258 - May 20, 2016

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) launches the report “Shameful Neglect: Indigenous Child Poverty in Canada”. The report calculates child poverty rates in the country, and includes the rates on reserves and in territories–something never before examined. The report also disaggregates the statistics and identifies three tiers of poverty for children in Canada, finding the worst poverty experienced by status First Nation children (51%, rising to 60% for children on reserve). The second tier encompasses other Indigenous children and disadvantaged groups (ranging from 22-32%), and the third tier consists of children who are non-Indigenous, non-racialized and non-immigrant, where the rate of 13% is similar to the OECD average. Read more

The first inter-sessional meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after the adoption of the Paris Agreement at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris last year, opened in Bonn on 16 May.
H. E. Mr. Manasvi Srisodapol of Thailand, the Special Representative of the Chair of the Group of 77 and China on Climate Change, speaking for the Group said as Parties move into the implementation of the Paris Agreement, the delicate balance of all issues achieved in Paris as well as the principles and provisions of the Convention must be preserved.
In her welcoming address, the COP 21 Presidency (France), Madame Segolene Royal, said that since the Paris Agreement was adopted, Parties are now more than negotiators. "You are co-builders in this context of multilateralism. We now have the foundation and we now have to build the common home. You are going to define the rules and mechanisms that all of us will implement and transform our economies. We have no time to lose ... the world is waiting for us to implement this new Agreement ... in its entirety and not cherry-pick," she stressed. Read more

A few weeks ago the Finance Committee of the National Council moved for Switzerland's official development assistance to be reduced to 0.4% or even 0.3% of gross national income over the coming years. That would mean cutting expenditure on actual development cooperation abroad by 30% to 50%. Care of asylum seekers here at home, which Switzerland absurdly counts as development spending, would then account for one fourth to one third of this expenditure.
In the National Council itself, the Finance Committee's radical cost-cutting proposals will hardly find a majority. It transpires from centre-right circles, however, that a call will indeed be made for cost-cutting in long-term development programmes in order to release more funds for short-term emergency humanitarian aid. The call will also be for development cooperation to be more closely tied to Switzerland's own interests, namely to migration partnerships and agreements for the repatriation of asylum seekers. Read more