Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 262 - June 24, 2016

Issue 262 - June 24, 2016
Social Watch reports
Spotlight report on the 2030 Agenda
 
   
 

Thailand: A “development trap” undermines sustainability

   
 
The Thai government has announced a “Pracha Rath” (State of the People) policy framework, but this “ironically has become a shared agenda between the Government and the industrial and corporate complex, enabling industrial and corporate interests to become the main drivers of development rather than the society and the citizen”.
The Thai Social Watch report 2016 describes a “development trap” with community self-reliance decreasing in rural areas. “As agro-industry takes over, farmers are becoming paid labor or even contract laborers on their own land. Land resources are being excavated mining and other extractive industries owned by by transnational corporations.” Meanwhile, development plans “call for big projects to facilitate the provision of resources, fuel, energy and transportation to the industrial sector and urban areas, causing under-reproduction of labor and damaging the environment”. Read more

 

   
   
 

Hungary: Between growth and sustainability

   
 
The contradictions between economic growth and a sustainable development approaches appear in National Framework Strategy on Sustainable Development (NFSSD) 2012-2024. The first approach identifies classic economic growth as a priority goal; while the second emphasizes environmental preservation and, accordingly, a shift to sustainable consumption and production patterns. The “decoupling” of economic growth and environmental destruction is envisaged, but it has so far not led to a reduction of the global environmental load in absolute terms, although it has contributed to a modest reduction in its rate of growth.
Whether the 2030 Agenda can live up to its promise to advance the sustainable development process and further international cooperation in this regard will only be seen in the implementation process: provided that it creates a precise and transparent monitoring system, argues the Hungarian civil society report. Read more

 

   
 
Social Watch starts publishing country reports 2016

Social Watch coalitions around the world are contributing their assessments and reports to the global Social Watch report 2016, under the overall theme Goals for 2030... and obstacles to getting there. The Social Watch network thus joins the current global discussions around a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and on a new development framework and the need for civil society monitoring.

The Social Watch national platforms are independent coalitions of civil society organizations struggling for social and gender justice in their own countries. The Social Watch network has been publishing since 1996 yearly reports on how governments implement their international commitments to eradicate poverty and achieve equality between women and men.

   
   
 

Recent austerity policies are undermining economic, social and labour rights within the European Union (EU) and are hitting the most vulnerable, the United Nations Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and human rights, Mr Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, has said.
This conclusion was highlighted in an end-of-mission statement following his recent official visit to EU institutions to assess the response of these institutions and of EU Member States "to the sovereign debt and financial crisis from a human rights perspective." Read more

 
   
   
 

In discussions of sovereign debt, some actors occasionally project the sensibility, implicitly or explicitly, that efforts to bring issues of justice and sovereign debt together are not entirely appropriate. In this view, questions of human rights, governmental accountability to citizens, and justice more generally fall into one legal and political arena, while sovereign debt belongs to another sphere–namely, to the hard-headed world of international finance, which has its own set of rules and market principles. This underlying assumption can ground the contention that, although it is possible for these areas to overlap to some degree, they should be understood as belonging to two separate worlds. Relatedly, this assumption also can undergird resistance to criticism of the existing sovereign debt regime and undercut efforts to change these practices. Read more

 
   
   
 

Last June 19th, we have been witnesses of the extremely violent actions of the Mexican State repressing the teachers and the organized civil society who fighting against the implementation of the educational reform in different areas of the State of Oaxaca. As a result of the use of force, at least six persons have lost their lives and dozens have been injured and arrested. At this moment there is no information about the whereabouts of the arrested persons neither there is an exact total number of injured and killed persons. Read more

 
   

 

 
SOCIAL WATCH IS AN INTERNATIONAL NGO WATCHDOG NETWORK MONITORING POVERTY ERADICATION AND GENDER EQUALITY
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