While initially scheduled to attend the Doha Financing for Development Review in Doha, the IMF Managing Director Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn has hinted he is no longer planning to attend. By withdrawing representation at the highest level, the gesture would send a political signal that seeks to undermine the strength of the UN process as it enters into critical matters of reform of international finance and at a very critical juncture in the negotiations addressing such issues at this moment in New York.
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Civil society organizations and scientists from around the world are calling for 'a new development paradigm' to address the toxic combination of climate change, growing poverty and inequality and poor health. The new report, Global Health Watch 2, says that unfair social and economic policies combined with bad politics are to blame for the poor state of the health of millions of people in the world.
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Myriam Vander Stichele, SOMO, argues that the call made by the World Trade Organisation and some European leaders to finalise the Doha round at the same time of financial reform talks (so-called Bretton Woods II) completely ignores that this would impose on the South exactly the same recipe of deregulation and liberalisation of financial services that caused the crisis in the first place. In fact, Free Trade Agreements already signed by both nations in both the North and the South are already likely to make increasing regulation of the financial sector difficult, if not impossible.
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"The upcoming Review Conference on the Monterrey Consensus, to be held in Doha, Qatar, next 29th November 2nd December, provides the EU with a new opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to policy coherence in the context of gender equality and women´s human rights by ensuring that macroeconomic issues are linked to development and social policy objectives."
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Rumors of the International Monetary Fund's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. While the IMF has spent most of the last three years looking for clients and "relevance," the end of the U.S. housing bubble and the resulting global credit crunch seem to have given the institution a new lease on life. However, it is on its track record on which the IMF should be judged as today's financial and economic crises unfold. The IMF's policy advice is always designed to reflect the best interest of investors.
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The virulent campaign against the International Criminal Court waged by conservative hardliners in the Congress and Bush administration has alienated America from its allies and isolated the United States from the court’s application and enforcement of atrocity law, including the “crime of aggression”—with major implications for U.S. military engagements overseas, write David Scheffer and John Hutson in a new paper for The Century Foundation. The lurid worst-case scenarios spun out by ICC foes have patently not come to pass, the former war-crimes ambassador and former judge-advocate-general of the Navy point out, and the next President and Congress need to engage the United States closely in the court’s work.
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La Via Campesina: call to action on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
D.R. Congo: Tracking the Eastern Congo Conflict
Global call to action to demand a new economic system
Selected news
Economy and Financial Affairs
- Tue Nov 18 2008
Social movements in Latin America confront the G20 and develop a plan of action to cope with the financial crisis
Social leaders belonging to the Hemispheric Social Alliance gathered in Quito to discuss the implications of the current global financial crisis and the actions that the peoples of the continent should take.
Source:
Hemispheric Social Alliance
People
/Society
- Tue Nov 18 2008
ASEAN Peoples' Forum 2008
Civil society organizations and social movements from across Southeast Asia will gather in Bangkok for the ASEAN Peoples' Forum (APF), from December 12 to 14, 2008.
Source:
ASEAN Peoples' Forum 2008
Human Rights
- Thu Nov 20 2008
UN human rights chief calls for end to Israeli blockade of Gaza Strip
"By function of this blockade, 1.5 million Palestinian men, women and children have been forcibly deprived of their most basic human rights for months," said Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Source:
UN News Centre
INSouth embodies an understanding, from a South perspective, of the new and emerging issues in the international arena, and the challenges and opportunities they pose for the South.
Migrants are commonly seen as both unwanted intruders and powerless victims, but Laura Agustin own ideas work to break down this duality and think about power in different ways. Laura Agustín writes as a lifelong migrant and sometime worker in both nongovernmental and academic projects about sex, travel and work.
