A new briefing by Eurodad concludes that many of the World Bank’s conditions impede on Ghana’s sovereign right to decide independently on appropriate measures to recover from the global crisis and to boost long term sustainable development. If the Bank is committed to improving developing countries’ ownership over their development pathways, its practices need to be aligned to its promises allowing developing countries their legitimate right to decide on their future.
[see more]

Throughout the continent, ‘oil has correlated with imperial subjugation, local authoritarianism and flagrant human rights abuses’. Citing examples of the devastating consequences a growing global hunger for energy has had for communities and ecosytems in oil-bearing regions, Oilwatch Africa calls for the world to start weaning itself from its ‘addiction to oil’ by ‘investing more in renewable energy, energy efficiency, better public transportation and small decentralised energy projects.’
[see more]

The world is still on track to achieve the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) target of cutting the rate of extreme poverty in half by 2015 says a new report by the United Nations a few months before a major General Assembly meeting is to review progress so far. Many countries are moving forward, but unmet commitments, inadequate resources, lack of focus and accountability, and insufficient dedication to sustainable development have created shortfalls in many areas. Some of these shortfalls were aggravated by the global food and economic and financial crises.
[see more]

The current default measure for economic and social progress is gross domestic product (GDP): the market value of all goods and services produced in a country during a given year. However, many question whether GDP is an adequate indicator of the well-being of countries and their citizens. A new paper by the Urban Institute synthesizes alternative indices that assess more adequately the development of all segments of society including women, children, the elderly, and racial and other minorities.
[see more]

IFI policy-based loans disproportionately harm poor women, who often become “shock absorbers” for neoliberal economic reforms like trade liberalization, privatization of public enterprises, government retrenchment, social spending cutbacks, user fees for essential services and financial sector reforms. A new guide developed by Gender Acion gives tips for submitting a gender discrimination compalint to an IFI accountability mechanism.
[see more]

La Via Campesina, FIAN, Land Research Action Network and GRAIN, together with over 100 allied civil society organizations, are issuing a loud appeal to stop the current wave of land grabbing that is taking millions of hectares of farmland away from rural communities across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Their appeal coincides with the release of a new World Bank report that confirms the massive extent of the current land grab assault and puts forward seven "principles" to make these land deals socially acceptable.
[see more]