For some time, most multilateral financial institutions have urged developing countries to borrow commercially, but not from China. Now, borrowers are stuck in debt traps with little prospect of escape.
Fifty years ago on 1 May 1974, the Sixth Special Session of the General Assembly (April–May) adopted a revolutionary declaration and programme of action on the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) “based on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all States, irrespective of their economic and social systems”. The hope was that a NIEO would “correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations”. Alas, what evolved is far from what was envisioned or called for.
In a historic first, Kenya's youth have mobilized in large-scale protests to demand that the political establishment listen to them. The Finance Bill 2024, which proposed new taxes across several sectors, was the catalyst for the protests, igniting outrage among a youth demographic that feels betrayed by decades of political promises. These protests, driven by economic and social grievances, escalated dramatically, culminating in clashes with police that led to numerous deaths and widespread unrest.
CIVICUS discusses the results and implications of recent elections to the European Parliament with Philipp Jäger, Policy Fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre, an independent, non-partisan think tank focused on European policy processes and outcomes.
Developing country governments are being blamed for irresponsibly borrowing too much. The resulting debt stress has blocked investments and growth in this unequal and unfair world economic order.
Since 2008, farmland acquisitions have doubled prices worldwide, squeezing family farmers and other poor rural communities. Such land grabs are worsening inequality, poverty, and food insecurity.
The World Bank expects the international economic slowdown to be at its worst in over four decades in 2024. This is mainly due to powerful Western nations’ contractionary macroeconomic and geopolitical policies.
The world is facing multiple crises that must be tackled quickly, with innovative approaches and brave decisions. The global financial architecture is an area that needs reform and thinking outside the box. The system created 80 years ago is not able to deal with today’s problems that range from climate change to pandemics, to increasing inequality, to conflict and fragility, to food insecurity and poverty.
The title of this piece is not mine.
It’s from the President of Turkiye calling for a reform of the United Nations Security Council.
It has since become a motto in the UN reform campaign encapsulating the shared resentment at a global system that gives the five Permanent members – The P5 of the UN Security Council – the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia – unfair and often destructive veto powers that undermines the very ideals for which the UN was established.
Developing countries are being blamed for having borrowed and spent irresponsibly. But they have only been doing what foreign powers and financial interests have urged them to do.
At last the UN Security Council has
passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. While stopping short of demanding a permanent end to the violence, it goes further than the world’s peak peace and security body had so far managed since the start of the current brutal phase of conflict in October. But the time it’s taken to get to this point signals an ongoing failure of global institutions to uphold human rights.
Quechua farmer Felipa Noamesa, who lives in the southern Peruvian department of Cuzco, prepares a cream of fava bean soup for breakfast every morning with bread and vegetable soup with noodles. Her children are grown up, so her priority is that her five-year-old granddaughter does not suffer from anemia or malnutrition, two problems she frequently sees in her community.
Sweating profusely, unable to sleep because of the heat, fed up with years of blackouts several times a day, many residents of Venezuela's torrid northwest want to cover the roofs and balconies of their homes with solar panels, and are asking the government to import them massively and cheaply from China.
Developing countries wanting to pursue industrial policy were severely reprimanded by advocates of the ‘neoliberal’ Washington Consensus. Now, it is being deployed as a weapon in the new Cold War.
Much higher interest rates – due to Western central banks – are suffocating developing nations, especially the poorest, causing prolonged debt distress and economic stagnation.
With 20 percent of the global population and vast untapped natural resources, not forgetting its human capital, it is time Africa had its rightful seat at the global table, the United Nations Under Secretary and Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Claver Gatete, has called.
As
dire economic predictions for 2023 did not materialise, pundits began 2024 far more
optimistically. But policy ghosts from the last half-century will likely undermine such wishful thinking.
A gathering ‘perfect storm’ – due to various developments, several quite deliberate – now threatens much devastation in the global South, likely to most hurt the poorest and most vulnerable.
The Year of the Dragon is upon us.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his message for this Lunar New Year, “The dragon symbolizes energy, wisdom, protection and good luck. We need these qualities to rise to today’s global challenges.”
Contractionary economic trends since 2008 and ‘geopolitical’ conflicts subverting international cooperation have worsened world conditions, especially in the poorest countries, mainly in Africa, leaving their poor worse off.
At high cost and with dubious efficiency, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have increased private profits at the public expense. PPPs have proved costly in financing public projects.