DEVELOPMENT: Poor Hit by Recession and Tax Havens

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Oct 27 (IPS) – With signs of a recession preoccupying policy-makers in industrialised countries, prospects for the success of an international conference on providing finance to the world’s poor do not appear high.

The United Nations sponsored event, beginning next month in the Qatari capital Doha, comes at a time when many governments, particularly in Europe, are reassessing commitments they have made to improve the lot of the most vulnerable.

Some of the European Union’s largest member states have recently deemed the EU’s plans to combat climate change, a phenomenon that affects poor countries disproportionately, too costly given the changing economic circumstances. Foreign aid budgets, already shrinking, are likely to suffer because of the same rationale.

Although the EU has been credited by many anti-poverty activists with playing a constructive role during a related conference on improving the effectiveness of development aid in Accra, Ghana, in September, the same campaigners feel that the bloc’s preparations for Doha leave much to be desired.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Debt Crisis, Development, Poverty

ARGENTINA: New Movement to Combat Poverty

October 25, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, October 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 24 (IPS) – A new movement formed by a host of political, social, labour and cultural organisations of Argentina launched an action plan Friday to reduce poverty and child mortality and to promote more equal distribution of wealth.

The action plan was presented at a three-day meeting organised by the Central Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) in the city of Jujuy, capital of the province of the same name in northwestern Argentina which is one of the most impoverished areas of the country.

Seven thousand delegates from 610 organisations and 23 provinces had confirmed their participation.

The CTA, a trade union federation of one million members, groups public servants, primary and secondary school teachers, judicial and health care workers, cooperatives, bankrupt companies salvaged by their employees, and retired and unemployed workers.

It was formed 16 years ago to counter the neoliberal, free market reforms implemented by the administration of Carlos Menem (1989-1999), and immediately applied for official recognition as a labour federation, with the support of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

But so far it has been denied such recognition, which perpetuates the monopoly held by the General Labour Confederation (CGT), formed primarily by industry, construction, commerce and service unions, and affiliated with the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party.

Years ago, the CTA had already called for the formation of a National Front Against Poverty, and entrusted it with the preparation of a proposal that was subsequently submitted to public vote in a plebiscite that drew millions of voters in December 2001, on the eve of the worst economic, social and political crisis in the history of Argentina.

Part of the proposal was taken up by the government of Eduardo Duhalde — the caretaker president appointed after Fernando de la Rúa resigned, who governed until May 2003 — in his attempts to deal with the crisis. This resulted, for example, in the establishment of a small monthly income granted to unemployed heads of households.

But the initiative was modified after reports that it had become tainted with political clientelism.

The CTA is now arguing that the current global financial crisis cannot be used as a pretext for abandoning the fight against poverty and inequality, and is renewing its struggle with a broader movement that will put social issues back at the top of the agenda.

”Just as the Berlin Wall paradigm fell in 1989, now too, Wall Street, the paradigm of international financial capital, is falling. We believe that this opens up an opportunity to discuss this issue among a broader range of forces,” Juan Carlos Giuliani, CTA Communications Secretary, said to IPS.

The purpose of the meeting, the trade unionist said, is to ”form a new political, social and cultural liberation movement” that will focus on three goals: establishing a set of priority issues — the ones that demand the most urgent attention — devising an action plan, and designing a comprehensive strategy that will help us organise our future actions,” he said.

The movement will include civil society organisations from every province, environmentalists and neighbourhood groups organised against industries and infrastructure works that pollute, trade unionists, human rights defenders, indigenous people, women’s rights activists, students, and religious and political leaders.

Except for the support of a few members of Congress, such as leftwing opposition lawmaker Claudio Lozano who has ties to the CTA, or of prominent human rights activists like Nora Cortiñas of the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo-Línea Fundadora (Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – Founding Line), the organisers do not expect to be joined by ”high-profile personalities.”

”Our strength will be in the diversity of the organisations represented, coming from 720 cities in the country,” the CTA spokesman said. ”Church-based groups involved in social work, cooperatives, self-managed workers and organisers of soup kitchen initiatives” are all taking part.

The CTA, Giuliani explained, is not looking to create a political party or launch candidates. ”What we want is to empower the people and push for more participatory democracy. If this later translates into an electoral platform, it will be merely as a secondary objective that will arise from the consensus of the participating organisations,” he added.

The meeting, convened as a ”Social Constituent Assembly,” began on Thursday with an international seminar that included presentations by representatives of Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST) and Central Única dos Trabalhadores central trade union, Chile’s Unified Workers’ Confederation, members of the constituent assembly that rewrote Ecuador’s constitution, and trade unionists from Spain.

The Social Constituent Assembly was formally inaugurated Friday with a rally and a march through the streets of the provincial capital, San Salvador de Jujuy. On Saturday, participants will be divided into 20 working committees that will deliberate separately, coming together at the end of the day for a plenary session where each committee will share their initiatives with the rest.

”The main objective of the meeting is to promote unity in the popular front, like we’re seeing in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela; which is why we are calling on everyone who believes that it is unacceptable for Argentina to have 13 million people living in poverty or children dying from preventable causes,” Giuliani declared.

Participants are also addressing other social issues of concern to the organisations, such as ”the plundering of natural resources,” or ”the perpetuation of a distributive system that generates inequality,” he said.

Filed Under: Economy, News, Poverty

DEVELOPMENT: Now Sit Up and Listen – to 117 Million People

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Oct 23 (IPS) – For every one in 50 people around the world to make a point of standing up somewhere on the planet to say the same kind of thing adds up to a lot of people. More than any mass mobilisation on any issue ever before.

And now that they have, it should follow for leaders, if only for their own sake, to sit up and listen.

The official figure for the campaign to ‘Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty and for the Millennium Development Goals’ Oct. 17-19 has been declared at 116,993,629. The call came from the Global Call for Action Against Poverty (GCAP), an alliance of about 100 social movements, non-government organisations and community and faith groups.

This was considerably more than the 43 million recorded last year.

But the actual number is almost certainly higher than this official figure, says Salil Shetty, director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign. The official total was announced while results, after due verification, were still coming in, he said, adding that the number that actually stood up would be about twice the 67 million estimated before the weekend event. Organisers say two percent of the world population physically stood up to make a point against poverty.

Actions ranged from standing up to deliver petitions to presidents or at local events where city mayors and other officials were invited to listen, to protest marches and meetings where everyone stood up to make a point. The protest gave quite vivid truth to the old cliché about local actions, carried out globally — this time about similar matters, simultaneously.

The added support for the campaign against poverty might just have been provoked by the global financial crisis, that has seen thousands of billions of dollars go into financial institutions brought down by dubious dabblers, after the leaders who sanctioned this money denied a fraction of that to feed the world’s hungry.

”If the rich countries kept their promise of 0.7 percent of their GNP for aid, that would generate more than 200 billion dollars, more than enough to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and is still much, much less than we’ve seen available for the banking bailout,” Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former U.N. high commissioner for human rights declared as the results came in Wednesday.

”The money is there. But it’s the political will. Leaders must listen to more than 116 million people,” she said. ”We have shattered all previous records for mass mobilisation. People really want to stand up against poverty, and say we need change.”

The highest number of people who stood up, 73 million, was recorded in Asia, with 13 million reported in Bangladesh alone. Africa recorded about 24.5 million, and less expectedly, what was declared the ‘Arab region’ recorded close to 18 million.

Europe recorded close to a million, but Latin America only about 211,000. North America seems not to have drawn a significant response at all — though the movement was led and coordinated from New York.

The initiative is not just about numbers, but a way to make protest possible. ”We’ve created an opportunity for ordinary people to have a voice and to participate and to feel that they are not just objects of change but really the drivers of change,” said Kumi Naidoo, co-chair of GCAP and honorary president of CIVICUS, a leading global NGO campaigning for rights and development.

”We’ve created a global event which is fundamentally local in nature,” he said at a press conference after the attendance count. ”My sense of why there was such an overwhelming turnout is that there is deep concern that the global economic crisis must not detract from meeting the MDGs, and exceeding them.”

The attention to the money market crisis rather than to the MDGs clearly spurred a good deal of the protest action.

For the food crisis the leaders struggled to pledge eight billion dollars, for the financial crisis they found 3,000 billion dollars, said Sylvia Borren, executive director of Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands. ”There is an ethical question here. If we had used that money at the bottom of the pyramid we would have achieved the MDGs by now.” In this protest, ”the urgency is the message.”

The participation in the protest, she said, is ”a democratic challenge for local governments, for national governments, but particularly also for the global governance we have, that says we the people do not understand that this kind of money can be spent on the Wall Street problem when children are dying every three seconds and women are dying at childbirth unnecessarily every minute.”

The message coming across, Borren said, was that money was being spent ”on financial institutions, on wars, it’s being spent on all sorts of things we don’t want; we want it spent on education, on water, on health, on food.”

But between the delivery of a message and its receipt there still lies a wide gap. World leaders are meeting soon, not to end poverty or to find ways of providing everyone affordable food, but to make sure that the rich continue to buy, and that their market continues to flourish.

Filed Under: Development, News, Poverty, United Nations

ECONOMY-US: It’s Not the ”Greedy Poor People”

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by William Fisher

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (IPS) – A 31-year-old law designed to put an end to ”redlining” and other restrictive practices that effectively shut poor and minority families out of home-ownership and neighbourhood development is being attacked by conservative commentators as a major cause of today’s sub-prime mortgage mess.

The charge is being incessantly repeated by some of the so-called mainstream media as well as by right-wing bloggers.

For many years, local and regional banks were happy to take deposits from people who lived in deprived neighbourhoods. A large proportion of these depositors were members of racial minority groups.

But the banks did not extend credit to these depositors. Small businesses did not receive finance. Mortgage loans were not made. Supermarkets and other shops were not built, forcing residents to travel miles for their household needs. Local jobs dwindled. Crime rose. Riots broke out in some cities in the U.S. Whole neighbourhoods fell apart.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Debt Crisis, Economy, Politics, Poverty, United States

AUSTRALIA: Poverty on the Rise Down Under

October 17, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Friday, October 17, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Oct 17 (IPS) – Australian cities rank high among the world’s most liveable in ‘quality of life’ surveys and car bumper stickers proclaim the nation as ‘young and free’. But an increasing number of people are living in grinding poverty, a situation that will likely be exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis.

Mark, 50, stands outside St Mary’s House of Welcome in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, where he comes regularly for meals. Currently homeless — or as he describes it, ”living in nature” — Mark’s lunch was prepared by volunteers with help from local politicians, who have given their time as part of the Australia-wide Anti-Poverty Week.

The Oct.12-18 anti-poverty drive has drawn hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and some 10,000 peopleto participate in a range of activities from rallies and forums to exhibitions and publications.

Among the themes linked to poverty raised during the week are education, health, work and housing.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Economy, News, Poverty

DEVELOPMENT-SIERRA LEONE: Living Off Scraps

October 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
October 4, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Oct 4 (IPS) – Each morning, Mariama Kamara and her two teenaged sons walk to Freetown’s main rubbish dump. Their mission: to dig through the mounds of garbage in search of scrap metal.

Kamara, 38, lost her husband nine years ago, when rebels of the Revolutionary United Front invaded the capital Freetown, at the peak of the civil war. In the carnage that followed, hundreds of civilians were killed, among them her husband.

Since then, Kamara has had the sole responsibility of bringing up her boys, now aged 14 and 16, as well as looking after six other members of her family, including her elderly mother. The family is crowded into a rented two-bedroom shack located in one of Freetown’s sprawling ghettos, a half-hour walk from Bomeh, the capital’s dump site.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Africa, Development, Poverty, Report

BOLIVIA: Water, Energy Everywhere – But Not for Locals

October 3, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
October , 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Oct 3 (IPS) – Peasant farmers in 42 villages along the Zongo valley in western Bolivia stand by and watch as the flourishing electricity industry harnesses the swift-flowing river while, paradoxically, their own farms are languishing from lack of water and energy.

The Zongo valley begins at the foot of the snow-covered Huayna Potosí and Chacaltaya mountains which are 6,030 and 5,344 metres above sea level, respectively, and disappears into the depths of a canyon which finishes at a lush tropical area 1,000 metres above sea level. Along its length there are 10 hydroelectric plants.

The turbines are driven by the torrential meltwater from the mountains, and provide 205 megawatts of power to the cities of La Paz and El Alto, and also Oruro, for a total of about 1.7 million consumers.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, Energy, Environment, Poverty, Report

ASIA PACIFIC: MDGs – Children Under Five Straggling

September 13, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Analyst Online – IPS
Saturday, September 13, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 12 (IPS) – Children under five years across Asia and the Pacific are being left behind in the race to reduce poverty even as the region boasts impressive strides in meeting major United Nations development goals.

The region’s economic gains, led by powerhouse China, will enable it to reach the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), reducing poverty by 2015, states a new report released by the Asian Development Bank and two U.N bodies, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

‘’Its greatest success has been with poverty, for which the region as a whole is ‘on track’ to meet the 2015 targets of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty,” states ‘A Future Within Reach
2008′, a publication released this week. It comes ahead of a summit of some 100 heads of states and governments at the United Nations in New York later this month.

The number of people living below the global poverty line of one US dollar a day stood at 641 million in 2004, down from the 1.9 billion people living in absolute poverty across the region in 1990, adds the 77-page report. This was attributed to ‘’rapid reductions in South-east
Asia and China.”

Achieving the eight MDGs with a specific deadline was a commitment made by the world’s leaders at a 2000 summit at the U.N. The others include achieving universal primary education, promote gender equality to empower women, reduce under-five child mortality and improve maternal
health, including reducing the maternal mortality ratio.

Yet the Asia-Pacific’s achievements on the poverty front have not been even, as the figures of malnourished children reveal. In South-east Asia, for instance, one out of every four children under five years are
malnourished. ‘’This is a middle-income region and the number of underweight children are the same as Sub-Saharan Africa,” said Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the Bangkok-based ESCAP, at a press conference.

‘’This is simply unacceptable,” she added. ‘’It shows the uneven progress across countries.”

The number of undernourished children in South Asia is higher, nearly every other child under five. ‘’Almost 50 percent of children are underweight in Southern Asia. This region alone accounts for more than half the world’s undernourished children,” added a U.N. background
note. Currently, there are close to 140 million children under five years across the globe who lack proper nutrients.

The Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for close to two-thirds of the world’s underweight children, ‘’is considerably behind its target for 2015,” states the publication of the U.N. bodies and the Manila-based
international financial institution. ‘’Twenty-eight percent (of the region’s) under-five children are underweight.”

Poor feeding practices is a major reason behind such a disturbing trend, noticeable in urban slum communities and among the rural poor, states the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). ‘’Countries in the region have some of the lowest exclusive breastfeeding and early introduction
of breast milk in the world.”

‘’Half of Asia-Pacific infants were not exclusively breastfed during first six months of life and almost one quarter lacked full coverage (two doses) of vitamin A supplementation,” it adds.

‘’Part of the problem is awareness. Mothers are not aware of the importance of breastfeeding,” Shantha Bloemen, spokeswoman for UNICEF’s East Asia and Pacific regional office, told IPS. ‘’They mix sugar and water to give the children to drink. And if they use unsafe water, that
can lead to diarrhoea.”

In addition, women have been influenced by companies marketing breast milk substitutes, like the powdered formula milk, adds Bloeman. ‘’The advertising of formula is having a huge impact in South-east Asia, because it is a growing market for the companies.”

The economic pull, attracting rural women to work in urban centres, has also impeded growth in children. So, too, the need for women to work in jobs that takes them away from breastfeeding, as is the case in countries like Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Children born to mothers who are anaemic and underweight end up being trapped in a ‘’vicious cycle,” says Bloemen. ‘’Women who are breastfeeding need to get the right sort of diet, but that is not happening. They also need the required micronutrients, such as folic acid.”

Consequently, malnourished children are coming in the way of the region achieving its fourth MDG — reducing child mortality. ‘’Globally, child mortality has fallen to a record low, but the situation in Asia and the
Pacific is still of great concern,” states the new report. ‘’Some four million children in the region die before they reach the age of five.”

‘’Out of 47 countries for which data are available, 15 are ‘off-track,’ and several have regressed,” the report reveals. ‘’The pattern is similar for infant mortality.”

According to the U.N., ‘’Malnutrition is estimated to be an underlying cause in more than one third of all deaths in children under five. The decrease in child malnutrition has been slow.”

Globally, the number of children under five who are malnourished was 26 percent in 2006, down from 33 percent in 1990, according to the world body. ‘’By 2006, the number of children in developing countries who were
underweight still exceeded 140 million.”

If at all, the only achievement where children have gained most in the MDG campaign is in primary education, the second goal. ‘’Primary education is one of the region’s great successes: almost all countries have net primary enrolment rations above 90 percent and for many the
ration is approaching 100 percent,” states the report.

Filed Under: Asia, Development, Poverty, Report

DEVELOPMENT-AFRICA: Why The Richest Continent Is Also The Poorest

September 5, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Politics Online – IPS
Friday, September 05, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Miriam Mannak

ACCRA, Sep 5 (IPS) – The ecological impact of natural resource exploitation on the lives of the poor in Africa and other regions is not being addressed sufficiently in aid effectiveness and development discussions, aid experts say.

”Africa is known as one of the richest parts of the world when it comes to natural resources, yet it is also the poorest region — despite the natural wealth and the aid flow,” said Charles Mutasa, executive director of the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD) û a Zimbabwe-based NGO working on Africa’s debt problem.

Mutasa was participating in a discussion at the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF3), which took place in the Ghanaian capital of Accra from September 2-4.

”The ecological debt caused by natural resource exploitation plays a crucial role in this scenario,” Mutasa added. ”It keeps the continent down, prevents the region from breaking out of the circle of poverty, and triggers the need for more aid.”

The term ecological debt refers to the debt accumulated by rich countries toward developing nations on account of resource exploitation, which often leads to environmental problems such as air and water pollution.

”Very few parties that are part of the development debate see the necessity of addressing ecological debt and its impact on people’s lives,” says Brenda Mofya, debt cancellation activist and the writer of a recent study on the ecological impact of copper mining in Zambia. The report will be launched at the end of September 2008.

Zambia is the world’s seventh biggest producer of the metal. In 2007 the country generated 521,984 tonnes of copper; this year the government expects production to increase to 600,000 tonnes.

However, Mofya said, the Zambian government and people are not seeing much from the wealth generated as most of the copper mines are in hands of the private sector — including many foreign companies.

”The Zambian government receives only 0.06 percent of the annual profit. Meanwhile the mining companies are getting richer, and ecological problems keep accumulating. These things have a profound impact on people’s lives,” she said.

She told IPS about the poor air quality in the copper belt, which does not meet international standards.

”Fugitive mine dust and dumped waste are causing health and environmental problems. We found that of the 45 waste dumps, 32 are overfull. This waste and fugitive dust have a negative impact on water quality too.”

According to Mutasa, rich countries involved in resource exploitation in Africa need to come to the table and repay the debt that has accumulated in Africa. ”If we want Africa to develop, we need to have a critical and serious look at this issue.”

Filed Under: Africa, Development, Economy, Poverty, Report

DEVELOPMENT: Donors And The Poor Agree Aid Agenda

September 5, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Politics Online – IPS
Friday, September 05, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Francis Kokutse and IPS correspondents

ACCRA, Sep 5 (IPS) – Delegates from both developing and developed countries have adopted the Accra Agenda For Action (AAA) as a guide to improve the way aid is given and spent.

The document was adopted at the close of a three-day High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which drew over 1,200 delegates from about 120 to the Ghanaian capital.

Under the AAA, developing countries committed to control their own futures, and donors to better policy and delivery coordination among themselves.

After some hard negotiations, both sides also pledge to make themselves accountable to each other and their citizens.

Although there were reports that the talks pitted developing countries, backed by the European Union, against leading donor nations the US and Japan, a senior U.S. spokesman played down the suggestion.

”A number of groups were very involved in the discussions and in putting forward inputs and ideas. Everyone was pitching in and working together,” said Henrietta H. Fore, Director of Foreign Assistance in the State Department and USAID Administrator.

”We wanted to reflect the urgency, but we also wanted to be realistic. We wanted to set targets that we could meet,” she told IPS.

Other US officials pointed to what they called ”cultural differences” between the U.S. and Europe — where European countries tended to set ”aspiration targets” by setting the bar high, the U.S. favoured realistic, achievable targets.

”The U.S. is very target-oriented, very results-oriented,” said a U.S. official attached to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the grouping of the worlds leading donors that had called the Forum along with the World Bank.

The Accra Agenda states that governments in the developing world will take stronger leadership of their own development polices and engage with their parliaments and citizens in shaping those policies.

”Donors will support them by respecting countries priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing the predictability of aid flaws,” it adds.

In addition, they agreed that ”achieving development results and openly accounting for them must be at the heart of we do.”

Since citizens and taxpayers of all countries expect to see the tangible results of developments, the gathered leaders promised to ”demonstrate that our actions translate into positive impacts on peoples lives.”

”We will be accountable to each other and to our respective parliaments and governing bodies for these outcomes.”

”Without addressing these obstacles to faster progress, we will fall short of our commitments and miss opportunities to improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people in the world,” they added.

The Agenda also agreed to deepen engagement with civil society organisations as independent development actors in their own right, as organisations whose efforts complement those of governments and the private sector.

Civil groups present at the Forum however criticized the final outcome saying it was a weak agreement characterised more by words than action.

”Even last-minute efforts by developing country ministers and their allies only ensured some marginal improvements. This aid forum was organised by the OECD, a rich-country donor club,” said Rose Mensah-Kutin, executive director of NETRIGHT Ghana.

”In a year when more than one hundred million people have been pushed into poverty by rising food prices, it is scandalous that donor governments have refused to remove damaging restrictions that increase the cost of food aid,” she added.

”Donors have failed to agree to reduce harmful policy conditions that undermine democratic processes and constrain country choices,” said Tony Tujan of Reality of Aid, an umbrella group,

”Despite efforts by recipient countries, donors continue to impose their own structures, by-passing domestic processes. Donor are failing to meet their side of the bargain.”

Ngonzi Okojo-Iweala, Ghanas minister for finance said, ”the Agenda has advanced the course of what we have been talking about. It has set targets and indicators to improve upon aid.”

Filed Under: Development, Economy, Poverty, Report
« Older Posts