Global Policy Forum

New evidence on dangers from land grabbing
▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221-transnational-corporations/52632-new-evidence-on-dangers-from-land-grabbing.html
signalé par @reka

ActionAid published a report “The Great Land Heist” highlighting how land grabbing in the global South undermines human rights and poverty alleviation. By giving evidence from Cambodia, Kenya, India, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania the report shows the negative implications of this ‘investment model’ like forced evictions, rising food insecurity, divided communities, human rights violations and increasing poverty, just to name a few. Since 2000, more than 60 million hectares have been subjected to land grabbing, according to the authors. That equals an area larger than Germany.

#terres

New GPF Report on R2P: In whose name?

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/265-policy-papers-archives/52620-new-gpf-report-on-r2p-in-whose-name.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/In_whose_name_weby.jpg

Global Policy Forum and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office publish a joint report on the concept of a Responsibility to Protect (R2P). "In whose name? A critical view on the Responsibility to Protect” by Lou Pingeot and Wolfgang Obenland provides an overview of the history and content of R2P, its positive contributions and its flaws. It concludes that R2P does not give a satisfying answer to the key question it is supposed to address: how best to prevent and, if prevention fails, respond to large-scale human rights violations and killings? The concept is particularly dangerous as it amalgamates arguments and proposals, mixing uncontroversial and widely accepted notions (that states have a responsibility towards their citizens) with more dubious claims (that military intervention is an appropriate tool to protect civilians).

Sharp rise in environmental and land killings

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/163-general/52607-report-sharp-rise-in-environmental-and-land-killings-as-pressure

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/Deadly_Environment_Global_Witness.jpg

Killings of people protecting the environment and rights to land increased sharply between 2002 and 2013 as competition for natural resources intensifies, a new report from Global Witness reveals. In the most comprehensive global analysis of the problem on record, the campaign group has found that at least 908 people are known to have died in this time. Disputes over industrial logging, mining and land rights the key drivers, and Latin America and Asia-Pacific particularly hard hit.

Video: The Privatization of the Post-2015 Agenda

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/37-other-events/52602-video-the-privatization-of-the-post-2015-development-agenda.html

Missed the event on The Privatization of the Post-2015 Development Agenda? Not to worry. WorldWeWant2015.org provides a webcast of the event and we’re happy to provide it here.

Partnerships for sustainable development are increasingly being promoted as a major, if not the primary, enabler for the implementation of the successor international sustainable development goals to replace the MDGs by 2015. However, a growing number of civil society groups warn against a partnership approach that places primary emphasis on enticing private sector participation and investments as this risks reinforcing the corporate capture of the Post-2015 Agenda. This Public Forum aimed to inform civil society organizations and member states with critical perspectives on the major issues and challenges associated with partnerships with the “private sector” for sustainable development.

Event: The Privatization of the Post-2015 Development Agenda

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/36-other-events/52595-event-the-privatization-of-the-post-2015-development-agenda.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/Side_event_privatization_of_Post-2015_-_04-2014.jpg

Invitation to an event on April 8, 2014 in New York: Partnerships for sustainable development are increasingly being promoted as a major, if not the primary, enabler for the implementation of the successor international sustainable development goals to replace the MDGs by 2015. However, a growing number of civil society groups warn against a partnership approach that places primary emphasis on enticing private sector participation and investments as this risks reinforcing the coporate capture of the post-2015 agenda.

This one-and-a-half hour Public Forum aims to inform civil society organizations and member states with critical perspectives on the major issues and challenges associated with partnerships with the “private sector” for sustainable development.

#développement #odm #privatisation #ppp #post-2015

The Political Economy of Offshore Jurisdictions

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52598-the-political-economy-of-offshore-jurisdictions.html

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/pol-eco-offshore-187x300.jpg

A recently published book adds further insights into the political economy of offshore jurisdictions. It raises questions about why offshore has been off-limits for serious political discussion for so many decades. What is the importance of the offshore economy? Is online Gambling a Game Changer to Money Laundering? What is the rationale behind the Secrecy Index of Tax Justice Network? How does Automatic Tax Information Exchange work? Is Austria a tax haven? With which ideology and with which narratives was it possible to avoid public discussions about the offshore economy? Which were the effects of “offshore leaks” in the spring 2013?

#paradis_fiscaux #criminalité_financière

Women respond to UN SDG proposal

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/252-the-millenium-development-goals/52596-women-mg-response-to-the-q19-focus-areasq-document-for-sustainab

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/Women-s-MG-response-to-Co-Chairs_19FOCUSAREA.jpg

At the ninth session of the UN General Assembly’s Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals, the Women’s Major Group (WMG) issued a response to the 19 proposed focus areas, assembled by the OWG in February. Through their response WMG contributes to the intergovernmental processes on SDGs and reflect the broad range of areas. The WMG is pleased to see an integrated approach, recognising the inter-linkages between the focus areas. It appreciates the stand-alone focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as the dealing with inequalities, multidimensional character of poverty or the universal access to education. However, it regrets that women’s rights are not mentioned in the document, although equality and empowerment cannot be furthered “without firm commitment to and fulfillment of women’s human rights”.

#droits_huamains #droits _des_femmes

Leaked Records Reveal Offshore Holdings of China’s Elite

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52567-leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-chinas-elite.html

Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist Party elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals. The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/republicofoffshore_homepage_withtext.jpg

January 22, 2014 | ICIJ

Nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong appear in the files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among them are some of China’s most powerful men and women — including at least 15 of China’s richest, members of the National People’s Congress and executives from state-owned companies entangled in corruption scandals.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS and other Western banks and accounting firms play a key role as middlemen in helping Chinese clients set up trusts and companies in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centers usually associated with hidden wealth, the records show. For instance, Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse helped Wen Jiabao’s son create his BVI company while his father was leading the country.

#chine #économie #paradis_fiscaux #criinalité_financière

How loans are reported as development aid

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/107-links-and-resources/52566-how-loans-are-reported-as-development-aid.html

A new report by Eurodad’s Stéphanie Colin deal with the issue of concessional loans in development finance. In the context of tighter budgets in OECD-DAC countries governments are looking for methods to increase official development assitance (ODA) levels without budgetary implications. One way of doing this is reporting a larger share of loans to developing countries as ODA.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/52d7a08caf019.jpg

Other measures in this directions are ideas to leverage development resources by ’blending’ public with private funds. The report discusses the main developments in this debate and presents recommendations on how to optimize the developmental benefits from the reform proposals.

January 17, 2014 | eurodad
A matter of high interest: Assessing how loans are reported as development aid

by Stéphanie Colin

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) compiles aid statistics that allow comparisons and monitoring of aid volumes provided by bilateral governments and multilateral institutions for the purpose of reducing poverty in developing countries. Loans offered at preferential terms can be reported as official development assistance (ODA), provided they meet certain concessionality conditions.

#aide #développement #ide #oda

One Small Step for Privacy, One Giant Leap Against Surveillance

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/161-politics/52564-one-small-step-for-privacy-one-giant-leap-against-surveillance.h

On December 18, 2013 the 193 members of the United Nations General Assembly unanimously approved a UN privacy resolution entitled “The right to privacy in the digital age.”

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/surveillance.jpg

The resolution, which was introduced by Brazil and Germany and sponsored by more than 50 member states, is aimed at upholding the right to privacy for everyone at a time when the United States and the United Kingdom have been conducting sweeping mass surveillance on billions of innocent individuals around the world from domestic soil.

January 7, 2014 | Electronic Frontier Foundation
One Small Step for Privacy, One Giant Leap Against Surveillance

The resolution reaffirms a core principle of international human rights law: Individuals should not be denied human rights simply because they live in another country from the one that is surveilling them. Signees hope the resolution will make it harder for the US and its Five Eyes allies to justify their mass surveillance activities by claiming that their human rights obligations stop at their own borders.

#contrôle #surveillance #big_brother

Illicit Financial Flows from Developing World Nearly $6 Trillion in last Decade

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52560-illicit-financial-outflows-from-developing-world-nearly-6-trilli

Crime, corruption, and tax evasion drained US$946.7 billion from the developing world in 2011, up more than 13.7 percent from 2010.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/Illicit_Financial_Flows_from_Developing_Countries_2002-2011-HighRes.jpg

These findings by Washington based Think Tank Global Financial Integrity, which peg cumulative illicit financial outflows from developing countries at US$5.9 trillion between 2002 and 2011 are part of a new study. “As the world economy sputters along in the wake of the global financial crisis, the illicit underworld is thriving – siphoning more and more money from developing countries each year,” says GFI President Raymond Baker.

Europe’s role in tax-related capital flight from developing countries 2013

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52559-giving-with-one-hand-and-taking-with-the-other-europes-role-in-t

Super programme : donner d’une main, et reprendre de l’autre !

Giving with one hand and taking with the other - CSOs urge European leaders to take further action against tax dodging

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/Giving_with_one_hand_and_taking_with_the_other.jpg

At the European level, the report – coordinated by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) – shows that much remains to be done. Tove Maria Ryding, Tax Coordinator at Eurodad, said: ”This week, we’re asking EU leaders to take the first step by making companies reveal to the public who their owners are, where they operate and what taxes they pay.

The second step is to ensure that the multinational companies pay their fair share of tax, both in the EU and in the rest of the world.”

She added: “For developing countries, tax dodging is especially devastating, with more money leaving their economies than what they receive in aid. While European citizens donate money to combat poverty in developing countries, multinational corporations with headquarters in Europe are making large profits in those same countries but many are avoiding their taxes. Until our governments put a stop to this, Europe is giving with one hand and taking with the other.”

Over 300 groups call for human rights in core of post-2015 development agenda

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211-development/52557-over-300-groups-call-for-human-rights-in-core-of-post-2015-devel

Over 300 groups call for human rights in core of post-2015 development plan

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/cesr.jpg

As governments meet at the United Nations this week to debate aspects of the sustainable development agenda to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015, over 300 civil society organizations from all parts of the world have come together to demand human rights be integrated into every aspect of the new framework.

Published on International Human Rights Day, the joint statement “Human Rights for All Post-2015” (below) will be presented to the Open Working Group (OWG) on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its 6th session later this week. It sets out 10 practical, baseline implications of embedding existing human rights standards into the core of the sustainable development agenda.

Reports Show Corporate Control Entrenched in Global Food Chain

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221-transnational-corporations/52528-reports-show-corporate-control-entrenched-in-global-food-chain-.

ETC Group and EcoNexus have issued reports surrounding the corporate control that is entrenched in the global food chain. The reports delve in to the dominance of the agricultural sector particularly in the industrial farm inputs such as animal feed production, livestock breeding, fertilizers/pesticides and seed production amongst others. Their findings show the devastation that these monopolies are causing to local farmers as their local breeds and food crop varieties have been lost.

Voir

▻http://www.etcgroup.org/putting_the_cartel_before_the_horse_2013

▻http://www.etcgroup.org/content/poster-who-will-feed-us-industrial-food-chain-or-peasant-food-webs

▻http://www.econexus.info/sites/econexus/files/Agropoly_Econexus_BerneDeclaration.pdf

▻http://www.econexus.info/publication/agropoly-handful-corporations-control-world-food-production

Ainsi que le rapport de l’ONU sur le droit à l’alimentation

▻http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20131025_rtf_en.pdf
#agriculture #alimentation

Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/225-general/52530-implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture.html

Implementing Rio+20: ECOSOC’s New Role and Its Old Culture

posted on: Monday, October 28th, 2013

by: Harris Gleckman, Center for Governance and Sustainability, University of Massachusetts – Boston

Almost since the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was created, there have been ECOSOC reform efforts. Most of these efforts have been preceded by a build-up of political enthusiasm and followed by quite minor changes. One then could be quite skeptical of the 2013 version of ECOSOC reform adopted this September [1]. The timing of this round of ECOSOC reform was based on the last time “ECOSOC was reformed” (General Assembly decision 61/16), but now supplemented by the Rio+20 outcome document’s call for the mainstreaming of sustainable development by ECOSOC.

ECOSOC has always been the weakest piece of the UN charter. Unlike the Security Council, there are no obligations for Member States or the UN system to act on ECOSOC’s decisions. As the opening paragraphs of the new resolution repeat three times, ECOSOC‘s job is “to coordinate” the economic, social, environmental and related activities of the UN system. But it was not given any ability to sanction UN-related organizations that ignore its advice, nor has it received any real role in budget decisions. And, unlike the Security Council and the General Assembly, ECOSOC has not been a place where governments bring pressing external economic, social or environmental threats to their security or development. Further, in spite of its name, it is not a place where economic counsel is given to global economic actors or where coordination of globalization’s challenges is forthrightly discussed.

voir ▻http://uncsd.iisd.org/guest-articles/implementing-rio20-ecosocs-new-role-and-its-old-culture

#environnement

Financial Secrecy Index 201

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52532-financial-secrecy-index-2013.html

New index reveals UK runs biggest part of global secrecy network

TJN’s 2013 Financial Secrecy Index exposes yawning gap between G20 rhetoric and reality

Today the Tax Justice Network launches its 2013 Financial Secrecy Index, the biggest ever survey of global financial secrecy. This unique index combines a secrecy score with a weighting to create a ranking of the countries that most actively and aggressively promote secrecy in global finance.

voir ►http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com

#paradis_fiscal #criminalité_financière #indice #index

Transnational Monitoring against the deadly Injustice at Sea

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/142-links-and-resources/52519-transnational-monitoring-against-the-deadly-injustice-at-sea.htm

Alternative alarm system against EU border regime at sea

Since the beginning of the 90s, thousands of people have tried to reach Europe clandestinely by boat, thereby contesting laws, policies and practices that attempt to limit the movement of the majority of Non-Europeans and transform them into “illegals” if they manage to reach Europe. However this act of freedom has come at heavy human cost. Over 13.000 cases of deaths at the maritime boundaries of the EU have been reported since the beginning of the 90s. Deaths and migrants’ rights violations are thus the structural product of the current border regime.

#migrations #asile #méditerranée #mourir_en_mer #morts_aux_frontières
Thus far, the EU as well as the states that serve as its watchdogs could avoid assuming responsibility for these deaths – it is difficult to prove who failed to act in an emergency in the open sea or who denied the right to demand asylum to migrants by pushing their boat back, for these violations happen far away from the gaze of activists and the public. Through the WatchTheMed online mapping platform, we seek to develop a powerful tool to monitor those who control migration and bring an end the impunity at sea.

Letter by Women’s Major Group to Ban Ki Moon on his MDG/Post-2015 Report
▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/252-the-millenium-development-goals/52476-letter-by-womens-major-group-to-ban-ki-moon-on-his-mdgpost-2015-

Women’s Major Group, representing 500 women’s organizations form all around the world, today addressed UN Secretary-general Ban Ki Moon with regard to his report to the 68th General Assembly on the progress towards the MDGs and the UN’s development agenda beyond 2015. In the letter, which is supported more than 50 civil society groups (including GPF), the coalition calls for a stronger recognition of women’s rights in the debated post 2015 development agenda as well as for a meaningful approach for a truly transformative approach to the prevailing macro-economic model. Finally, the letter calls on Ban “to ensure that human rights are firmly placed at the centre of the new development paradigm and to warrant that any new framework should be fully coherent with existing agreements and processes on (women’s) human rights”.

#droits_des_femmes #femmes

A Report on the State of Corporate Concentration in Agriculture Industry
▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/217-hunger/52479-a-report-on-the-state-of-corporate-concentration-in-agriculture-

ETC Group publishes its 111th Communiqué today. The 40-page report – “Putting the Cartel before the Horse…Who Will Control Agricultural Inputs?” – provides market data on the world’s major corporate players involved in food and agriculture and analysis of key sectors in the corporate food chain. The report concludes that cartel arrangements are commonplace and the oligopoly paradigm is dominating the entire food system.

#agrobusiness #alimentation

UN’s Unions Appalled at UN Use of Mercenaries
▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/258-regulation-and-oversight-of-pmscs/52485-un-unions-appalled-at-un-use-of-mercenaries-a-un-staff-coordinat

UN Unions are today calling on United Nations’ Secretary General Ban Ki‐moon to urgently review its use of mercenaries to carry out security and peacekeeping work ahead of the 2013 General Assembly. UN Unions believe this practice is damaging the UN and putting staff at increasing risk, and taking place against the worrying backdrop of an attack on staff employment rights by UN management.

A report published this week by the United Nations’ own Working Group on the use of mercenaries reveals that the UN is increasingly outsourcing contracts for armed guards, convoy security, security advice, risk assessment and transport services.

The Working Group’s report, supported by the Global Policy Forum’s report on the use of Private Military and Security Companies by the United Nations, highlights the lack of credible guidelines to regulate mercenaries and describes how the UN has no way of checking whether mercenaries have previously committed human rights abuses.

#ONU #mercenaires #sécurité_privée