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.
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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.
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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.
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Women and gender issues were glaring in their absence from the March 31st Haiti International Donors' Conference held in New York when billions of dollars were pledged to finance Haiti's reconstruction. Haiti's National Plan of Action, the blueprint guiding reconstruction efforts and resource allocation, was based on a Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) that failed to address gender dimensions of Haiti’s proposed strategies for reconstructing macroeconomic, social, environmental policies, as well as infrastructure and governance.
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In March 2010, the city of Rio de Janeiro hosts the V World Urban Forum (WUF). Organized by the UN Habitat Agency, the WUF has been dominated by official delegations that responded to multilateral organization discourses and speeches. It has also been unable to open space to social movements that resist the implacable logic of entrepreneurial cities and large projects, especially in peripheral countries.
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