Social Watch news

Source: ESCR-net
http://www.escr-net.org

NGO alternative or shadow reporting within the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) can be strategically utilized to increase awareness on the rights and obligations contained in the treaties and promote integration of all women’s human rights.

A new initiative by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) called "Regional Project on Child Development Indicators” aims to produce, for the first time, statistical data on child development outcomes for children aged 24 to 59 months in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Today, there are no comparable indicators for the region. The compiled comparable data will allow the measurement of child development in four areas: cognition, socio-emotional, language and emerging academic skills (early notions of reading, writing and mathematical capacity).

How well are individual countries progressing towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Despite an extraordinary public campaign to mobilize support for the MDGs, including the UN MDG Summit in New York in September 2010, until now, there has remarkably little effort to track progress at the country level in a way that non-specialists could readily understand.

20 COUNTRIES ALONE CANNOT DEFINE THE DESTINY OF THE ENTIRE WORLD FOR SYSTEM CHANGE AND AN END TO BUSINESS AS USUAL, LET'S BUILD ANOTHER WORLD!

THE PEOPLE WILL NOT CONTINUE TO PAY FOR THE CRISIS.

Join the People's Week of Collective Actions in Seoul, November 6 to 12, 2010 

Author: 
Ana Abelenda

Thursday 7 October (Washington D.C.)
Who is responsible if a hydroelectric project financed by the World Bank displaces a whole population or pollutes rivers? These kinds of questions were raised in debates between representatives of civil society organizations and Bank officials in the forum about policies that affect civil society, which was part of the annual IMF and World Bank Group meetings in Washington DC from 6 to 10 October.

Author: 
Ana Abelenda

Tues 6 Oct (Washington D.C)
The need to build a new development paradigm with alternative measures that can provide evidence based development policies was the subject of discussions at the kick-off of the Civil Society Policy Forum of the WB and IMF Annual Meetings taking place here in Washington D.C. 6-10 October 2010. Is there a shifting trend in the way governments design development policies for social progress?

Author: 
Roberto Bissio, Third World Institute

Source: Civicus

The annual meeting of the governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in the first week of October is traditionally an occasion for protesters to rally against the system and criticise these sister institutions created at Bretton Woods at the end of World War II.

Intervention by Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch in The Post MDG Summit,  assessment and discussion on next steps
Monday 4 October 2010, 3pm-6pm, Room XXVI, Palais des Nations, Geneva

It is really very interesting to see the program to this debate starting with the phrase “We can end Poverty by 2015” which was highlighted around the UN building during the summit. The “we can” was probably a way of welcoming US president Barack Obama, one of the key speakers in the summit.  In a way this slogan is raising the bar because the actual promise of the MDG’s was to halve poverty by 2015 and not ending it, so we welcome this increased aspiration, of course.

Source: UNCTAD

Richard Kozul-Wright of UNCTAD's Unit on Economic Cooperation and Integration among Developing Countries has said that new development paths are an essential part of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and new levers of economic growth are necessary as many of the levers of the past decade will be absent in this one. 

Source: Center of Concern 
By: Aldo Caliari

“The future of democracy depends on whether civil society and trade unions can develop the capacity to counter the lobby of the financial sector.” This dramatic statement was made by Nancy Alexander, from the Heinrich Boell Foundation, at the opening of a side-event held on the fringes of the Millennium Development Goals Review Summit.

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