The World Social Forum: counterweight to the World Economic Forum
23/2/2024: The 2024 annual meeting of the World Social Forum has been held in Nepal, attended by fifty thousand participants from over 90 countries, exchanging strategies to address the multiple global crises, from climate catastrophes to unfettered capitalism, inequality, social injustice, wars and conflict.
Source: Inter Press Service
The Zero Draft to create a Pact for the Future has landed
7/2/2024: A draft agreement to seal September’s much-anticipated Summit of the Future has been released by the co-facilitators, Namibia and Germany. Built on the proposals made in Secretary-General António Guterres’s Our Common Agenda, the draft commits member states to the principles of human rights and to "fill critical gaps in global governance, and accelerate efforts to keep our past promises and agreements.”
Source: PassBlue
A new order for global trade is taking shape
15/1/2024: The World Trade Organization was established to pursue the idea of unfettered global trade without distortions of subsidy by national governments. This model of globalisation is crumbling as major economies deploy subsidies to gain control over resources and technologies for the future green economy.
Source: DownToEarth
A human rights economy is key to sustainable development
17/1/2024: The UN Summit of the Future scheduled for September 2024 may be the final opportunity to stimulate real momentum to the Sustainable Development Goals. An alternative economic model that enables the realization of human rights within planetary boundaries has support from many development agencies.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Report card: Half-way to the global goals deadline
29/12/2023: Launched in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set out a 15-year plan to realize 17 interconnected targets, known as the Sustainable Development Goals. What progress has been made at the halfway mark?
The second part of this UN progress update.
Source: UN News
IMF rules continue to be rigged against the world’s poorest
19/12/2023: Two development economists explain why they believe that the latest review of quotas that determine the IMF's decision-making powers shows exactly how unfair the rules are for developing countries. It is now over ten years since the richer countries committed to rebalance the formula.
Source: Devex
COP28 is a farce rigged to fail
9/12/2023: George Monbiot outlines alternative voting systems that could replace the consensus rule for UN conferences on climate and biodiversity. This permits minority special interests, led by fossil fuel countries, to block progress.
Source: The Guardian
Security Council agrees to terminate UN mission in Sudan
1/12/2023: The Security Council has decided to terminate the mandate of the UN political mission in Sudan, after Khartoum said that it was failing to meet expectations. It was established in June 2020 as a special political mission, to provide support to Sudan during its political transition to democratic rule.
Source: UN News
What does success look like for next WTO ministerial?
19/11/2023: Prospects seem slim for even a low-ambition outcome at the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization due in February 2024. Recent developments suggest that there is no political will among the major players to restore genuine multilateralism, let alone to address the long list of outstanding promises to developing countries.
Source: AfronomicsLaw
The first step toward world peace: fix the UN
27/10/2023: The inability of the Security Council to uphold the UN Charter has been exposed as never before in its impotence to respond to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. These crises should have been recognised as a catalytic opportunity for a majority of the 193 member countries to pursue reform.
Source: Policy Magazine