Social Watch News

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. 

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.

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.