A high profile European report on the MDGs is being launched in Brussels on Friday and in New York on 24 September. It says the Millennium Development Goals have been a force for good in the world, but that progress is uneven, too slow and threatened by the global economic slowdown. The authors also argue that the European Union brings particular strengths to the MDG project....(read more)...
It is clear that many of today's poor will simply stay poor, even if economic growth is sustained. They are caught in one or more of five poverty traps: insecurity of life or livelihood; weak citizenship status; living in a deprived area; experiencing social discrimination; or held back by poor quality work. The second international Chronic Poverty Report, launched next week, shows that the poorest can be included in progress. ...(read more)...
The Food Summit in Rome turned out better than expected. It was not derailed by Robert Mugabe. It survived the unedifying wrangling over a final communiqué. It gave the topic a good hearing. It confirmed some practical actions. And it passed the torch successfully to the G8 in Japan in July....(read more)...
The Food and Agriculture Organisation summit is a vital step in a process that will develop through a series of events in 2008, including the G8 in Hokkaido in July, and the UN Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals, in New York in September. At this stage, the Rome summit must deliver four things....(read more)...
The UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, delivered an excellent speech last Tuesday (12 February) on the importance of international efforts to support democracy in the developing world, or what he called ‘the democratic imperative’. The speech was particularly refreshing in its recognition that the road to democracy can be considerably bumpy and that democratic consolidation remains deeply problematic for many of the emerging democracies of the ‘Third Wave’. Initial expectations that these countries...(read...
Last week, I attended the World Economic Forum
in Davos. This is the second of five blogs with my reflections and
predictions on how the debates will be taken forward in 2008. (see my first blog - 'Global corporate citizenship in 2008')Substantively, my enduring memory is of the profile given to hunger and malnutrition, with Robert Zoellick (WB) and Josette Sheeran (WFP) both mounting major public initiatives on the ‘forgotten MDG’.
Elsewhere in these Davos blogs I consider the power of story....(read...