Social Watch news
Published on Mon, 2014-06-16 00:00
There is almost no dispute that the worst performance of all Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was registered on MDG 8, the Global Partnership for Development. The impending deliberations to shape the post-2015 development agenda offers a high level political opportunity to correct that imbalance. For that, it is important to avoid treading the same path of the MDG approach. The initial blueprint for the MDGs entirely neglected mention of the means of implementation necessary in the form of international support. Since it was clear that developing countries would never get on board with an agenda that would harshly judge their progress in improving certain quantifiable indicators without correlative commitments of financial support to help achieve them, one more goal was added, and this was Goal 8 on the Global Partnership. Accepting this approach condoned the methodological nonsense of putting means of implementation as a category equivalent to the goals they should serve. It condemned finance for development to the constraints of a format that required simplified, succinct, one-size-fits-all statements that could never capture the breadth, complexity and diversity needed for development finance to work. |
Published on Thu, 2014-06-12 21:46
The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) hosted the European Investment Bank (EIB) Vice President, Mr. Philippe de Fontaine Vive along with a team of EIB staff and representatives of the EU delegation to Lebanon on June 10th. The meeting brought together representatives of Lebanese Civil Society and international organizations working in Lebanon. ANND's work and monitoring of the EIB's involvement in the region prompted such a meeting. Since 2005, we could see a change in the EIB policies, which has chosen as interlocutor private local banks with three different measures. The first one enters in the micro-credit process to "facilitate households' access to credit", the second one consists in the implementation of private investment funds for the SMEs and the last one consists to negotiate directly with the local private banks on projects to finance SMEs from specific sectors. |
Published on Thu, 2014-06-05 13:19
Only through financial reform can human rights be sustained. The Center of Concern provides this video for your use in classes, meetings, and other community organizing opportunities to educate viewers regarding the need for financial policy makers to be held accountable to those in marginalized situations and poverty. The brief video stimulates new ways of thinking about equality and social justice and its inextricable linkage to financial systems. The program recommends actions that each of us can and should take to address changes in local and global financial systems to promote and sustain equality and human dignity throughout society. |
Published on Thu, 2014-06-05 11:24
As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reach their end date in 2015, there is broad consensus that the development agenda which replaces them has to be universal. Whereas the MDGs applied to developing countries only, the post-2015 development agenda will apply to all countries. To support the implementation and measurement of the post-2015 development goals, a "data revolution" has been called for that will enable governments and policymakers to better track development progress and give citizens the information they need to demand more from their governments and hold them to account. To respond to this, The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), The North-South Institute (NSI) and Southern Voice on Post-MDG International Development Goals (Southern Voice), have launched the "Post-2015 Data Test: Unpacking the Data Revolution at the Country Level", an initiative that examines how the universal post-2015 development agenda can be applied and measured across a variety of country contexts. |
Published on Sat, 2014-05-31 00:00
Book Review By Prof Kuldeep Mathur The Citizens Report on Governance and Development 2013 is the seventh Citizens’ Report of National Social Watch. Democracy is not an easy system of governance. It is fragile and its essence cannot be guaranteed only because there is an assurance of periodic elections. Its fragility is dependent on several factors among whom is the way its governing institutions function and the kind of policies that are determined by them. This requires constant vigilance lest the people who come into power and institutions that they oversee function according to the mandate given to them by the people who have elected them go astray. This vigilance can be exercised only if there is information available to the people. Thus, transparency and availability of information is critical to hold then accountability. |
Published on Fri, 2014-05-30 09:33
Civil society groups from Asia and the Pacific met in Bangkok from May 15-17, 2014 to develop regional recommendations on just and sustainable development for action at the Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development. The Asia Pacific region has seen rapid growth, and significant improvements in the lives of millions of people over the last decades but grave challenges remain. The region still has the largest concentration of people without adequate food, income and employment. Inequalities in the distribution of wealth, power and resources between and within countries, and among rich and poor, men and women, social groups, and current and future generations, are growing and undermining wellbeing for the majority of the population. |
Published on Thu, 2014-05-29 15:00
On Tuesday the 27th of May 2014, Mirjam van Reisen was interviewed by the Dutch newspaper the ‘Volkskrant’ concerning the human trafficking of Eritrean refugees. She explains that those in power in Eritrea richly profit from the human trafficking and even find ways to extort money from Eritrean refugees in Europe via taxation. In addition, it is likely that Eritrea also profits from the extortion of Eritrean families in Europe who pay human traffickers money in order to save their kidnapped relative. An incredible amount of money circulates within these human trafficking practices and estimations surpass 600 million Euro’s in the last 5 years alone. In order to protect Eritrean refugees and in the attempt to stop these criminal practices, Mirjam van Reisen advises to close all Eritrean embassies in Europe, to better secure refugee camps where refugees are kidnapped from, and to cooperate with refugees to reveal and capture those responsible for these criminal practices. |
Published on Thu, 2014-05-29 13:46
Every year the World Bank issues its Doing Business Report, which contains a ranking of each country’s business environment. In 2012, the President of the World Bank, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, appointed an Independent Panel of experts to review the report. The panel, chaired by South Africa’s Minister of Planning Mr. Trevor Manuel, appeared to be an opportunity to change the report for the better. The Panel, indeed, came up with substantive recommendations for an overhaul of the Doing Business. But most of them have been ignored. Those who understand the power of this report and its associated rankings to drive governments and give them the cover to put the interest of private companies ahead of the rights of working people and their families may win again if we don’t speak up. |
Published on Thu, 2014-05-22 11:00
With two more sessions left to go, work at the United Nations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) faces continuing challenges. On Friday 9 May, the Co-Chairs of the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) produced a narrative ‘chapeau' of two pages that will accompany the framework of the goals, sent to all Member States. The 11th session of the OWG took place on 5-9 May at the UN headquarters in New York. The Co-Chairs are Ambassadors Macharia Kamau of Kenya and Csaba Korosi of Hungary. Since the OWG started holding intergovernmental discussions in March 2013, developing countries in the Group of 77 and China (G77) have consistently called for a narrative to accompany the SDG framework. |
Published on Thu, 2014-05-15 19:24
The National Social Watch Report and the Odisha Social Watch Report 2013 was launched on Tuesday 13th May 2014 in DRTC-CYSD, Bhubaneswar, India. Mr. Jagadananda, President of National Social Watch, presented both the reports, followed by the presentations of the findings of the reports and open discussions. Dowload the Citizens' Report on Governance and Development 2013 and Odisha Social Watch Report 2013. » |
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