Overview of the Club des Pins, venue of the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, held in Algeria in October 1967. Credit: National Center of Archives, Algiers, Algeria/ Group of 77

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 3 2023 (IPS)

As signs of a new Cold War are fast emerging at the United Nations, the US continues its war of words with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The rivalry, which extends from Russia and Taiwan to Iran and Myanmar – where the UN’s two permanent members are on opposite sides of ongoing political or military conflicts– has now triggered a battle on semantics.

Is China, described as the world’s second largest economy ranking next to the US, really a “developing nation”?

The US House of Representative unanimously passed a bill March 27 directing the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to strip the PRC of its “developing country” status in international organizations

Titled “PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act” — the bill cleared the House in an overwhelming 415-0 vote. The legislation reads: “It should be the policy of the United States—

(1) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in any treaty or other international agreement to which the United States is a party;

(2) to oppose the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as a developing country in each international organization of which the United States is a member; and

(3) to pursue the labeling or treatment of the People’s Republic of China as an upper middle-income country, high income country, or developed country in each international organization of which the United States is a member”.

At the United Nations, China is closely allied with the 137-member Group of 77 (G77), the largest single coalition of “developing countries” (a group created in 1964 with 77 members).

Since China is not a formal member of the G77, the group describes itself either as “The G77 and China” or “The G77 plus China.”

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN and a former UN Under-Secretary-General, told IPS the defining of a developing country is a complex challenge.

“There is no established framework or charter for defining a “developing country,” he noted

According to well-respected economist Jeffrey Sachs, the current divide between the developed and developing world is largely a phenomenon of the 20th century. Some economists emphasize that the binary labeling of countries is “neither descriptive nor explanatory”.

For the UN system, the G77, which provides the collective negotiating platform of the countries of the South, is in reality synonymous with nations which are identified as “developing countries, least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries and small island developing states” (SIDS).

“They are all sub-groupings of developing countries and belong to the G-77, he pointed out.

Outlining the group’s history, he said, the G-77 was established in 1964 by seventy-seven developing countries, signatories of the “Joint Declaration” issued at the end of the first session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.

Although members of the G-77 have increased to 134 countries, the original name was retained due to its historic significance. Developing countries tend to have some characteristics in common, often due to their histories or geographies, said Ambassador Chowdhury, Chairman of the Administrative and Budgetary Committee (Fifth Committee) of the UN General Assembly in 1997-98 and Chair of the Group of 27, working group of G-77, in 1982-83.

In October 1997, he said, China joined the G-77 while keeping its special identity by proposing the nomenclature as “G-77 and China”. China aligns its positions on the global economic and social issues with G-77 positions for negotiating purposes.

Being the largest negotiating group in the United Nations, and in view of the mutuality of their common concerns, G-77 is not expected to agree to separate China from the current collaborative arrangements.

“And more so, if the pressure comes from the US delegation, in view of the recent resolution of the House of Representatives of the US Congress, to take away the categorization of China as a developing country”, declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

In a World Bank Data Blog, Tariq Khokhar, Global Data Editor & Senior Data Scientist and Umar Serajuddin, Manager, Development Data Group, at the World Bank, point out that the IMF, in the “World Economic Outlook (WEO)” currently classify 37 countries as “Advanced Economies” and all others are considered “Emerging Market and Developing Economies” according to the WEO Statistical Annex.”

The institution notes that “this classification is not based on strict criteria, economic or otherwise” and that it’s done in order to “facilitate analysis by providing a reasonably meaningful method of organizing data.”

The United Nations has no formal definition of developing countries, but still uses the term for monitoring purposes and classifies as many as 159 countries as developing, the authors argue.

Under the UN’s current classification, all of Europe and Northern America along with Japan, Australia and New Zealand are classified as developed regions, and all other regions are developing.

The UN maintains a list of “Least Developed Countries” which are defined by accounting for GNI per capita as well as measures of human capital and economic vulnerability.

“While we can’t find the first instance of “developing world” being used, what it colloquially refers to — the group of countries that fare relatively and similarly poorly in social and economic measures — hasn’t been consistently or precisely defined, and this “definition” hasn’t been updated.”

“The World Bank has for many years referred to “low and middle income countries” as “developing countries” for convenience in publications, but even if this definition was reasonable in the past, it’s worth asking if it has remained so and if a more granular definition is warranted.”

In its legislation, the US House of Representatives says “not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a report identifying all current treaty negotiations in which—

(a) Any international organization of which the United States and the People’s Republic of China are both current member states, the Secretary, in coordination with the heads of other Federal agencies and departments as needed, shall pursue—

(1) changing the status of the People’s Republic of China from developing country to upper middle income country, high income country, or developed country if a mechanism exists in such organization to make such a change in status;

(2) proposing the development of a mechanism described in paragraph (1) to change the status of the People’s Republic of China in such organization from developing country to developed country; or

(3) regardless of efforts made pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2), working to ensure that the People’s Republic of China does not receive preferential treatment or assistance within the organization as a result of it having the status of a developing country.

(b) The President may waive the application of subsection (a) with respect to any international organization if the President notifies the appropriate committees of Congress, not later than 10 days before the date on which the waiver shall take effect, that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States.

Speaking during the debate, Representative Young Kim (Republican of California) said: “The People’s Republic of China is the world’s second largest economy, accounting for 18.6 percent of the global economy.”

“Their economy is second only to that of the United States. The United States is treated as a developed country, so should PRC,” Kim said. “And is also treated as a high-income country in treaties and international organizations, so China should also be treated as a developed country.”

“However, the PRC is classified as a developing country, and they’re using this status to game the system and hurt countries that are truly in need,” she added.

Elaborating further, Ambassador Chowdhury said the World Bank, as a part of the Bretton Woods institutions, classifies the world’s economies into four groups, based on gross national income per capita: high, upper-middle, lower-middle, and low income countries.

In 2015, the World Bank declared that the “developing/developed world categorization” had become less relevant and that they will phase out the use of that descriptor.

Instead, their reports will present data aggregations for regions and income groups.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) accepts any country’s claim of itself being “developing”.

He said certain countries that have become “developed” in the last 20 years by almost all economic metrics, still wants to be classified as “developing country”, as it entitles them to a preferential treatment at the WTO – countries such as Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

The term “Global South“, used by some as an alternative term to developing countries, began to be mentioned more widely since about 2004.

The Global South refers to these countries’ interconnected histories of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources are maintained.

“Most of humanity resides in the Global South,” declared Ambassador Chowdhury.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Overview of the Club des Pins, venue of the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, held in Algiers, Algeria from 10 to 25 October 1967. Credit: National Center of Archives, Algiers, Algeria/ Group of 77

By Branislav Gosovic *
GENEVA, Mar 18 2021 (IPS)

I observed the Group of 77 (G77) shortly after the 1964 Geneva Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the 1968 UNCTAD 2 in New Delhi and the 1972 UNCTAD 3 in Santiago. The Group was influential at the time, benefiting from several factors helpful for its functioning which are no longer present, namely:

High level leadership.

Major developing countries and their leaders, who spearheaded the establishment and rise of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and then of G77, maintained close interest in activities of the two groupings. They also believed in the importance of collective action of the Global South at the UN, and provided high level political drive and direction. This kind of involvement of leaders has not been common recently.

UNCTAD Secretariat support.

The G77 enjoyed substantive and logistical back-up from the UNCTAD secretariat in Geneva, and in New York where its Division on Development Finance was located. This secretariat was staffed by committed personalities, both from the North and the South, with required expertise and political outlook.

The UNCTAD secretariat acted as a “public service” offered by the UN to developing countries to assist them in their unequal, political and economic encounter with the B Group of developed countries, who controlled the world economy and were unhappy to see the Third World pressing its demands in an organized manner in the UN.

The UNCTAD secretariat also provided G77 with intellectual back-up, and assisted it to mount initiatives in trade, finance and development fields. It also offered the infrastructure, logistical and administrative support necessary for Group’s functioning.

Following the launch of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the General Assembly, and of other joint NAM – G77 initiatives when the two groupings worked closely together, the B Group launched a drive to weaken and gradually end UNCTAD secretariat’s support for developing countries’ group actions arguing that this favouritism was contrary to the “neutral” posture international civil servants were required to assume in the North-South tug-of-war.

Official logo of the Group of 77 since 1967

Focussed, limited of agenda.

In the beginning, the G77 agenda was focussed on trade and development within purview of UNCTAD. This helped the Group evolve its positions on key items of interest to developing countries, i.e. commodities, manufactures, invisibles, development finance, transfer of technology, restrictive business practices, as well as to organize its work, to involve developing countries governments in Group action, and to mobilize expertise and human resources required.

Activities of the Group were structured by Trade and Development Board, standing committees and conferences held every four years, patterned on the1964 Geneva Conference.

This provided a framework and timetable for a continuing process and a set of objectives for Group’s work. As the principal locus of G77 activities gradually shifted to UN HQs in New York in early 1970s and scope of its work diversified, the Group was not able to evolve its own strong support structure needed to cope with many demands of the wide-ranging UN agenda.

A few years later, I was on the South Centre staff when it cooperated closely with the Group of 77 (1991-2005), as well as with NAM, during the chairmanships of Indonesia and Colombia (1992-1998). To the extent of its limited capacities, the Centre served as their detached “outfit” to undertake assignments.

There was a demand for Centre’s “pro bono” services and its contributions were used and appreciated, illustrating the need for continuous substantive support for both G77 and NAM in their work.

Today, the twin groupings of the Global South confront a wide-ranging global agenda, acting on two parallel tracks: G77 is predominantly concerned with the socio-economic questions, while NAM is focussed on political and security issues.

Raúl Prebisch, first Secretary-General of UNCTAD, attending the First Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77, held in Algiers, Algeria from 10 to 25 October 1967. Credit: National Center of Archives, Algiers, Algeria/ Group of 77

The two domains overlap and are interrelated, and should be dealt with in an integrated, coordinated manner. While the relations between them are cordial, coordination is ad hoc and close working relations needed to deal with these questions are lacking.

It is not easy to keep up successfully with demands that the panoply of issues on UN agenda present, more so as the Global South does not have its own organization to back it up.

The G77 relies on the support of its own valiant very small technical secretariat and keeper of its institutional memory, which however does not have substantive capacities necessary to deal with multiple needs.

NAM, in turn, has traditionally eschewed having its own institutional support and depends on the foreign ministry of the country which happens to chair the Movement during a given three-year period.

The importance of greatly improved organization of developing countries at the global level has been self-evident for decades. It is essential for achieving their greater cohesion and utilizing more fully the potential of South-South cooperation, and for increasing their collective and national influence and role in the United Nations and on the world scene.

It is also necessary for exercising political and intellectual counterweight vis-à-vis the domineering, well-organized and equipped North.

When chairing the South Commission, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, used to say “Countries and peoples of the South must work together and stand up to be counted!”

He felt that a global organization of the South would help the Third World to stand up, interact, think, work and act together, and play an important role in giving direction to multilateral policies and in shaping global futures.

It can be argued that by not building purposefully their institutional strength in the world arena, the developing countries have in effect disempowered themselves. Still, much can be done today to improve the presence of the Global South on the world scene. Developing countries have the means, resources and brains for this historic undertaking and necessity.

The idea of establishing a global organization of the South is now six decades old. When the matter was raised in the South Commission, Manmohan Singh, member of the Commission and its Secretary-General, felt that this was unrealistic given myriads of obstacles, but concluded “unless someone was to serve it to developing countries on a silver platter”.

Accepting the validity of his perceptive observation, one should consider how to provide a “silver platter” that would help leapfrog potential obstacles and opposition to the idea, and revitalize the process of gradually building-up this still-missing, South-South piece of global governance architecture of such great importance.

In the rise of the Global South, a primordial role was played by a few visionary national leaders (Nasser, Nehru, Tito) who contributed to conceptualizing ideas and goals, and then spearheaded the initiative to translate these into practice by launching NAM in 1961 and via NAM paving the way for emergence of G77 in 1964.

Later, such was the case of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia, who sought and got support of 1986 Harare NAM Summit for the establishment of the South Commission, and then convinced Mwalimu Nyerere to accept to be its Chairman.

During his chairing of the South Commission, Mwalimu Nyerere grasped the critical role of organizational support for the Global South and devoted the last decade of his life to this idea, which resulted in establishing the South Centre as an IGO intergovernmental think-tank of the Global South.

This was a major breakthrough, but only a first step which did not match the modest “South Secretariat”, a medium sized (35 professionals) multifunctional set-up recommended by the South Commission in its report 1990 “The Challenge to the South”.

At the 2000 South Summit in Havana, a group of developing countries’ leaders headed by President Obasanjo of Nigeria, then chair of G77, launched the initiative to upgrade the institutional machinery of the Global South by “taking over” the South Centre and transforming it into a “coordinating commission” for improving implementation and follow-up of agreed policies and decisions of the Summit.

However, since it was poorly conceived, covertly prepared without any consultation with those concerned, and foisted on the Summit at the last minute, the idea was opposed by many countries and did not get off the ground.

The next upcoming South Summit, on hold due to covid19, offers an opportunity to launch a thorough preparatory, coordination and consultation process required for establishing an Organization of the Global South. Drawing on the rich experiences accumulated, and lessons learned, it could agree on a project and a facility for such an organization.

An innovative institution is needed to serve as the home of the Global South, a nursery of ideas and initiatives of common interest, and a reference point on complex issues on the UN agenda.

For a start, functions of a “South secretariat” recommended in the South Commission’s 1990 report “The Challenge to the South”, a high-level panel, including some elders who have taken part in earlier endeavours and persons with hands-on-experience of South-South cooperation, can be set up to launch this project of historic importance for the Global South in its efforts to overcome dependence and figure prominently in the changing world geo-political map.

* Branislav Gosovic was on the staff of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), and South Commission. His last post, before retirement, was with the South Centre in Geneva 1991-2006.

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When Palestine made history as Chair of the Group of 77 in 2019. The current chair is the Republic of Guinea. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 9 2021 (IPS)

When the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, was trying to strike a hard bargain in its negotiations with Western nations years ago, one of its envoys famously declared: “You have the numbers. We have the money.”

But that implicit threat– signifying the power of the purse– did not deter the G77 from playing a key role in helping shape the UN’s socio-economic agenda, including sustainable development, environmental protection, universal health care, South-South cooperation, eradication of extreme poverty and hunger—all of them culminating largely in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 and targeted for a 2030 deadline.

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s second largest economy after the US, has remained an integral part– and a strong supporter– of the G77, going back to the historic 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

At that summit meeting – which marked a battle between the West and the global South over funding to promote development while protecting the environment — a G77 delegate told his colleagues in a closed-door gathering: ”We have to confront them with an iron fist cloaked in a velvet glove.”

The G77’s strength in numbers—with over two-thirds of the UN’s 193-member states —provides it with an unparalleled political clout ranking ahead of the Non-Aligned Movement (with 120 members), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57), the Asian Group (55), the African Group (54), the Latin American and Caribbean Group (33) the European Union (27) and the Eastern European Group (23).

https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/regional-groups

While the G77 focused on achieving sustainable development, NAM pursued the hard-core politics of the global South, including human rights, neo-colonialism, international security, military conflicts and UN peacekeeping.

Speaking from Beijing, Dr Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s ambassador to China, told IPS that while many countries in the Western camp have tended to dismiss the G77 and China as irrelevant to contemporary economic/political developments, the Group has provided the platform for developing countries to make a profound input to contemporary global economic policy formulation.

In its heyday, he pointed out, the G77 and China contributed significantly to the development of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and the Law of the Sea regulatory framework.

“Today, the Law of the Sea Convention is considered to be the Constitution of the oceans and seas,” said Dr Kohona, a one-time Chief of the UN Treaty Section and a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

More recently, he noted, its influence on the Rio Process, the conventions on Climate Change, Biological Diversity, Hazardous Wastes, Ozone, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been seminal.

He said the G77’s influence on global policy development in these major areas of importance to humanity remain undiminished and cannot be underestimated.

“These global rules are now impacting on policy formulation in the Bretton Woods institutions as well”, he added.

The role played by individual intellectual giants from the developing world in highlighting the G77 and China needs to be acknowledged, he argued.

“Today China has assumed a lead role in addressing the challenge of climate change affecting the very survival of humanity,” he declared.

Mourad Ahmia, Executive Secretary of the G77, told IPS the integral role played by the Group in economic diplomacy and projecting the development interests of the global South is a testimony to its continued relevance in the ongoing global development dialogue.

When it was established on Jun. 15, 1964, the signing nations of the well-known “Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries” formed the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations to articulate and promote their collective interests and common development agenda.

Since the First Ministerial meeting of the G-77 held in Algeria in October 1967, and the adoption of the “Charter of Algiers”, he pointed out, the Group of 77 laid down the institutional mechanisms and structures that have contributed to shaping the international development agenda and changing the landscape of the global South.

Over the years, he said, the Group has gained an increasing role in the determination and conduct of international relations through global negotiations on major North-South and development issues.

The G-77 adheres to the principle that nations, big and small, deserve an equal voice in world affairs… Today the Group remains linked by common geography and shared history of struggle for liberation, freedom and South-South solidarity, said Ahmia.

The Group has a presence worldwide at U.N. centres in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Washington D.C., and is actively involved in ongoing negotiations on a wide range of global issues including climate change, poverty eradication, migration, trade, and the law of the sea.

The G-77 remains the only viable and operational mechanism in multilateral economic diplomacy within the U.N system. The growing membership is proof of its enduring strength.

http://www.g77.org/doc/

Chakravarthi Raghavan, the former Chief Editor of the Geneva-based SUNS, told IPS since its founding in 1964, the G77 came into being, along with the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as an organ of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and brought about several changes for the better in the international economic system.

With UNCTAD came the scope for “alternate view” to “liberal/neoliberal economics and Generalized System of Preferences (GSP schemes) – – “True, they are voluntary, not mandatory.”

The principle of non-reciprocity, and Special & Differential treatment in trade relations with developed countries (initially non-binding, Part IV of GATT-1947, but contractual for developing countries after 1994 Marrakesh Agreement for WTO) that the US now is trying to eliminate as part of its proposals for “WTO Reform”, said Raghavan a. former Editor-in-Chief of Press Trust of India,

The Jamaica accord (following the collapse of international money and finance system with (former US President Richard) Nixon’s repudiation of dollar-gold convertibility at $35 an ounce) – and Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

The G77 also created the concept of “development” as against the original IMF Bretton Woods concept of “Reconstruction and Development” for war-ravaged economies of Europe, said Raghavan, winner of the 1997 G77/UN Development Programme (UNDP) Award.

In the immediate post-war order, the major Industrialized countries decided on policy (with US holding a veto on most decisions) that others were forced to accept. Now there is at least an attempt at dialogue (from G7 to G20).

Initially, said Raghavan, the G77 concerned itself only with economic issues; the much earlier NAM dealt with political and security issues.

But gradually, individual G77 members, brought their political and security issues and alliances with Great Powers, to influence the G77 decision-making. This has resulted in weakening the G77 positions and influence in international economic matters, declared Raghavan.

The writer is a former editor of the Journal of the Group of 77

  

Credit: Institute for Palestine Studies

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 17 2018 (IPS)

Nikky Haley, the vociferously anti-Palestine US Ambassador to the United Nations, warned member states last year she will “take down names” of those who vote against American interests in the world body—perhaps with the implicit threat of cutting US aid to countries that refuse to play ball with the diplomatically-reckless Trump administration.

But that vengeance-driven head count – and no ball playing — could be a tedious exercise for the US when 146 out of 193 member states vote to affirm Palestine as the new chairman of the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations.

The 146 included some of the strongest Western allies of the US, plus four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: UK, France, China and Russia.

The only two countries that stood sheepishly by the US were Israel, its traditional client state, and Australia, a newcomer to the ranks of US supporters.

The 15 abstentions included some of the usual suspects: Austria, Andorra, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Honduras, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Monaco, Poland, Slovakia and Tuvalu.

The vote in the General Assembly on October 16 was, by all accounts, a humiliating defeat to the Trump administration which moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and cut $300 million from its contributions to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aiding Palestinian refugees.

Both were decisions aimed at undermining Palestine at the United Nations. But the Palestinians pulled off a major victory despite the behind-the-scenes lobbying both by the US and Israel to thwart the Palestinians.

Palestine, which is a non-member state, was endorsed as the chairman of the Group of 77, beginning January next year, at a ministerial meeting late September. The General Assembly vote was a ratification of that decision.

Mouin Rabbani, Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies at Washington DC, told IPS the election of Palestine as the new Chairman of the Group of 77, particularly given the overwhelmingly lopsided nature of the vote, can only be interpreted as a pre-meditated and deliberate slap in the face to the United States by the international community.

Last month the civilized world audibly laughed at Trump as he engaged in another boorish display of Americana at the General Assembly, he added.

“Today it demonstrated that its response to the determination of the United States to dismantle the international system and its institutions, eliminate the concept of accountability under international law, make US power the sole arbiter of international affairs, and use the Question of Palestine as the vehicle of choice for achieving these objectives, can also take more serious forms”.

Following the vote, Haley said the United States voted against the resolution granting the Palestinians privileges at the United Nations as chair of the “Group of 77” – a coalition of developing Member States at the UN.

“The United States does not recognize a Palestinian state, notes that‎ no such state has been admitted as a UN Member State, and does not believe that the Palestinians are eligible to be admitted as a UN Member State.”

The U.S. strongly opposes the Palestinian election as Chair of the G77, as well as the so-called enabling resolution in the UN General Assembly, added the outgoing envoy, who announced last week that she will resign her post by the end of the year.

“The Palestinians are not a UN Member State or any state at all. The United States will continually point that out in our remarks at UN events led by the Palestinians.

“Today’s UN mistake undermines the prospects for peace by encouraging the illusion held by some Palestinian leaders that they can advance their goals without direct peace negotiations. In fact, today’s vote does nothing to help the Palestinian people,” said Haley.

The Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour said the General Assembly vote represents multilateralism at its best, with the wider membership supporting a resolution to enable the elected Chair of a group to perform its duties effectively.

He said it was an expression of respect for the decision of the Group of 77 and China to elect the State of Palestine as its chair for the year 2019 by consensus, following the endorsement by the Asia-Pacific group of the State of Palestine’s candidature, also by consensus.

“The State of Palestine will spare no effort to prove worthy of this trust in its capacity to represent and defend the interests of the Group of 77 and China, while also engaging constructively, and in an inclusive and transparent manner, with all partners, in order to advance cooperation and mutually beneficial agreements, for the common good of all humanity,” he added.

The General Assembly resolution not only ratified the ministerial decision but also provided Palestine with additional rights and privileges, including the right to make statements on behalf of the Group of 77 and China, including among representatives of major groups; the right to submit proposals and amendments and introduce them on behalf of the Group of 77 and China and the right to co-sponsor proposals and amendments.

Additionally, Palestine has been given the right to make explanations of vote on behalf of the States Members of the United Nations that are members of the Group of 77 and China; the right of reply regarding positions of the Group of 77 and China; and the right to raise procedural motions, including points of order and requests to put proposals to the vote, on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

Rabbani said the election of Palestine to lead the Group of 77 should be seen as a direct response to the US recognition of exclusive Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem in flagrant violation of numerous UNSC resolutions, the termination of US funding to UNRWA as part of a campaign to redefine Palestinian refugees out of existence, punitive measures taken against the Palestinian civilian population of the occupied territories to dissuade the Palestinians from pursuing claims against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and further measures to legitimize perpetual Israeli control over the Palestinian people, their territory, and resources.

“If this was a traditional election for the Chairmanship of the Group of 77 it is questionable whether Palestine would have been nominated, highly unlikely it would have won, and virtually out of the question it would have achieved the result it did. In other words, this was about issues much larger than the managerial qualifications of the successful candidate, and above all a political message directed at Washington,” Rabbani declared.

The vast majority of Group of 77 members have gotten in line to ask Nikki Haley, and by extension the “hidden genius”, Jared Von Metternich, to take down their names and note that they categorically reject US policy on Palestine and on the broader objectives the Trump administration is seeking to achieve, he said.

“The greater challenge is to translate these symbolic victories, important as they may be, into substantive achievements,” he declared.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

Credit: Institute for Palestine Studies

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 24 2018 (IPS)

The Group of 77 (G77) — the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations– is to be chaired by Palestine, come January.

“It’s a historical first, both for Palestine and the G77,” an Asian diplomat told IPS, pointing out that Palestine will be politically empowered to collectively represent 134 UN member states, including China.

Created in June 1964, the 54-year-old Group comprises over 80 per cent of the world’s population and approximately two-thirds of the United Nations membership

Traditionally, the G77 speaks with a single voice before the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body at the UN, and also at all UN committee meetings and at international conferences.

Under a system of geographical rotation, it was Asia’s turn to name a chairman for 2019. The Asian Group has unanimously endorsed Palestine, which will be formally elected chair at the annual G77 ministerial meeting, scheduled to take place in mid-September.

Palestine will take over from the current chair, Egypt, which is representing the African Group of countries.

The chairmanship is a tremendous political boost for Palestine at a time when it is being increasingly blacklisted by the Trump administration which is kowtowing to the Israelis.

Although it is not a full-fledged UN member state, Palestine is recognized by 136 UN members, and since 2012, has the status of a “non-member observer state” –as is the Holy See (the Vatican).

Nadia Hijab, President, Al-Shabaka Board of Directors, told IPS: “At a time when Israel is moving on all fronts to wipe Palestine definitively off the map through relentless colonization – and to muscle in on UN committees despite its flagrant violations of international law — it is a source of solace to see Palestine slated for a very visible role at the UN.”

However, comforting as this may be, she pointed out, it will take a lot more than this to make “Palestine” a reality on the ground.

Sadly, the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership has been unwilling or unable to end security coordination with Israel and to heal internal divisions. Instead, she said, it is cracking down on peaceful Palestinian protests.

”It is also reshaping the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has always been recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, in a way that excludes alternative and opposing views,” Hijab declared.

Martin Khor, Advisor to the Malaysia-based Third World Network, told IPS: “I think it will be a historic and a significant development-first for the G77 countries to elect Palestine as its chair, and thereby affirm their confidence in its leadership.”

The election will also prove that the State of Palestine itself has decided it can mobilise its human and material resources to take on the complex task of coordinating the largest grouping in the UN system– even though it has to fight its own very challenging battles of survival and independence, said Khor, the former executive director of the Geneva-based South Centre.

“Both Palestine and the G77 deserve the support of people around the world to wish them success in voicing and defending the interests of developing countries in these very difficult times when international cooperation and multilateralism are coming under attack,” he said.

Last week, the Trump administration refused to grant visas to a six-member Palestinian delegation that was expected to participate at the UN’s High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development which took place July 16-18.

This was clearly in violation of the 1947 US-UN Headquarters Agreement which calls on the US, among other obligations, to facilitate delegates participating at UN meetings.

Asked about the visa refusal, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters last week: “Well, certainly, we’re aware of this latest incident, but as far as I’m aware, there is a Host Country Committee that deals with disputes involving access to the United Nations and any problems dealing with the host country on that.”

”As of now, the Host Country Committee has not been approached or formally informed of this, so they haven’t acted on this. But it’s normally their role to deal with this situation. Of course, we would hope that all of those who are here to attend UN meetings would have the ability to do so,” he added.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General who headed the Department of Public Information (DPI), told IPS chairing the G-77 will be an unprecedented role for Palestine. He said leading that large, varied yet collaborative group will require tactful handling by all sides at a time when the rightful Palestinian cause needs every support as the region—and a fragmented conflicted, almost leaderless world— is facing serious challenges.

“It is hoped that Ambassador Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine and an experienced diplomat with proven U.N. record, will be given the opportunity and required leeway to operate in an inclusive, patient and fruitful manner to enhance the role of the G 77 while advancing the status of the Palestine, said Sanbar, who served under five different UN secretaries-general.

At the UN, the Trump administration has been increasingly undermining the Palestinian cause – a cause long supported by an overwhelming majority of member states in the world body.

In May, the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem even though the UN has deemed it “occupied” declaring that the status of East Jerusalem should be subject to negotiations and that East Jerusalem will be the future capital of the State of Palestine.

Last month, the Trump administration also reduced its funding—from an estimated $360 million in 2017 to $60 million this year — to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1949 to provide assistance to over 5.5 million refugees resulting from the creation of Israel in 1948.

Last year when Secretary-General Antonio Guterres proposed the appointment of former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as UN’s Special Representative in Libya, the proposal was shot down by US Ambassador Nikki Haley, purely because he was a Palestinian.

And speaking before the US House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, Haley went even further down the road when she indicated she would block any appointment of a Palestinian official to a senior role at the UN because Washington “does not recognize Palestine” as an independent state.

Suddenly, the Palestinians, for the first time, seem blacklisted– and declared political outcasts– in a world body where some of them held key posts in a bygone era.

Guterres, who apparently relented to US pressure by stepping back on Fayyad’s appointment plucked up courage to tell reporters: “I think it was a serious mistake. I think that Mr. Fayyad was the right person in the right place at the right time, and I think that those who will lose will be the Libyan people and the Libyan peace process.”

And, he rightly added: “”I believe that it is essential for everybody to understand that people serving the UN are serving in their personal capacities. They don’t represent a country or a government – they are citizens of the world representing the UN Charter and abiding by the UN Charter,” he said, pointedly directing his answer at Haley

A former chair of the G77 chapter in Vienna told IPS although the Palestinian issue is fundamentally a political one, centred as well on the legitimacy and legality of Israeli occupation, it no longer remains in the political-legal realms exclusively.

He said there are a large number of issues of economic, social and cultural and environmental nature, including health, education, food, water, etc, which arises both directly from conditions of occupation, as well as laterally from other conditions such as denial of humanitarian access, and, very recently, the declaration of “Israel as a Jewish state”.

It is logical that advancing a struggle on these issues call for a broad forum of solidarity, and the G 77 fits the bill, he noted.

In an oped piece marking the 50th anniversary of the G77, Mourad Ahmia, the G77 Executive Secretary said: “When it was established on Jun. 15, 1964, the signing nations of the well-known “Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries” formed the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations to articulate and promote their collective interests and common development agenda.

Since the First Ministerial meeting of the G-77 held in Algeria in October 1967, and the adoption of the “Charter of Algiers”, the Group of 77 laid down the institutional mechanisms and structures that have contributed to shaping the international development agenda and changing the landscape of the global South for the past five decades, he pointed out.

“Over the years, the Group has gained an increasing role in the determination and conduct of international relations through global negotiations on major North-South and development issues.”

The Group has a presence worldwide at U.N. centres in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Washington D.C., and is actively involved in ongoing negotiations on a wide range of global issues including climate change, poverty eradication, migration, trade, and the law of the sea.

“Today, the G-77 remains the only viable and operational mechanism in multilateral economic diplomacy within the U.N system. The growing membership is proof of its enduring strength,” he declared.

By Miroslav Lajčák
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2017 (IPS)

When the Charter of Algiers was adopted 50 years ago, it marked the unity of the Group of 77. This unity has not wavered since then.

Credit: UN Photo

Today I want to focus on the key role played by the Group of 77 in strengthening our multilateral work. And I want to identify opportunities for stronger cooperation, as we head into the 72nd Session.

I will first point to the Group’s commitment to maintaining momentum around the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement.

These two frameworks involve big commitments. And big commitments need loud reminders to ensure they are met. The Group of 77 has spoken in a united voice. Over the past two years, it has worked to remind us all of the financial pledges made to humanity and to the planet. And I intend to add my voice over the coming year.

G77 members have also played a major role in promoting specific goals and issues. We have seen this through initiatives to mobilize youth for Sustainable Development. We will see this again, with the launch of the International Decade for Action on “Water for Sustainable Development” in 2018. And the Group’s commitment to combating climate change will be clear throughout COP23, which will be chaired by Fiji.

In addition, the Group has also acted as an import platform for south-south cooperation. I stand ready to support the preparation leading to the Second UN Conference on South-South Cooperation, to be hosted by Argentina in 2019

This focus on financing and partnerships is very much in line with the priorities of my Presidency. I intend to work with the Group of 77 throughout the coming year to identify opportunities for the sharing of ideas and lessons learned.

Second, I want to stress that an active G77 is crucial in other areas.

In 2018 the General Assembly will be charged with adopting Global Compacts for Refugees and Migrants. To succeed, we must focus on the needs of people, rather than our individual positions or ideologies. And we will need active engagement from the Group of 77.

Additionally, I will convene a High-Level Event on Sustaining Peace in April 2018. It will offer us an important opportunity to strengthen UN actions around peace and prevention. I intend to consult many G77 members as we work towards this event.

Finally, another opportunity for better cooperation lies in our collective goal for a stronger United Nations.

The 72nd Session will see UN Member States consider the reform agenda of the UN’s Secretary-General. This will apply to the UN development system, peace and security architecture, and management. I am committed to facilitating open and inclusive dialogue on reforms. The G77 will be a key partner in this process.

For the UN to carry out the mandates set by Member States, it needs adequate funding. We will need a timely agreement on the UN regular budget for 2018-2019. I commend the Group for its active engagement in this area.

The Group of 77 has a loud – and a united – voice. It can call attention to the needs and priorities of its members. This helps to ensure a prominent role for Least Developing Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States on the international stage.

But, more importantly, the Group can shed light on the needs and priorities of the people living in these countries.

Many of them are facing challenges. Some have experienced the devastating impact of Hurricane Irma and Maria. Others are dealing with the effects of terrorism, conflict, or drought.

These people, however, are also creating opportunities. They are working to mediate conflicts – start new businesses – and advocate for people and the planet.

Let us ensure that the 72nd Session involves stronger cooperation between the G77 and UN bodies, including the General Assembly. And let us ensure that this cooperation is focused on the people you are all are here to represent.

Excerpt:

The Republic of Ecuador, currently chair of the largest single coalition of developing countries at the United Nations, is reviving a longstanding campaign for the creation of an inter-governmental UN tax body and the elimination of tax havens and illicit financial flows.

Practicing what it preaches, Ecuador says it is the world’s first country to hold a nation-wide referendum on tax havens, scheduled to take place on February 19.

Addressing a meeting of the 134-member Group of 77 (G77) on January 13, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who was anointed the new G77 chair for 2017, said “illegitimate wealth mostly affected the world’s poorer nations”.

“There should be more knowledge havens and less tax havens,” he said, at a formal handover ceremony of the chairmanship, from Thailand to Ecuador.

Meanwhile, speaking at a civil society panel discussion in Washington DC on January 12, Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, said Ecuador, in an unprecedented move, will let the people decide, pointing out that “the struggle against tax havens is a global struggle.

“We need a UN tax body to ensure tax justice. Ecuador will unite with all those fighting this battle – states and civil society.”

The referendum, known as the “ethical pact,” will ask “Do you agree that, for those holding a popularly elected office or for public servants, there should be a prohibition on holding assets or capital, of any nature, in tax havens?”

Public servants and elected officials will be given a year to repatriate their capital or be removed from office or their post.

At the panel discussion, several US-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) commended the new G77 chair, for leading a campaign both for the elimination of tax havens and the creation of a new UN tax body.

The proposal for a UN tax body has already been shot down twice by Western nations, first, at the Financing for Development (FfD) conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015, and also at the 14th session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 14) in Nairobi in August last year.

Asked about the feasibility of the proposal against Western opposition, Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the Jubilee USA Network, one of NGOs backing the proposal, told IPS: “In just a few years we’ve seen almost universal acknowledgment of the problems of tax avoidance, tax evasion and corruption.”

“At the same time we do see clear opposition from many wealthy countries on the idea of a global tax body as part of a solution”.

For this to be successful, he pointed out, there needs to be some re-envisioning of the proposal from the Addis Ababa conference. He said the G77 could also engage in bilateral agreements to move this forward.

“While the United Nations tries to operate by consensus, we could also see countries force a vote at the United Nations. While a vote would likely be successful under this method, without some re-envisioning of the concept, we’d likely see many wealthy countries refuse to participate in the process,” he warned.

Asked if Ecuador will be able to pull it off?, LeCompte told IPS: “Ecuador seems to be operating out of a G77 consensus on these issues. Since the Financing for Development meetings in Addis Ababa, we’ve seen G77 countries like Ecuador strengthen their support for these efforts.”

The original proposal by the G77 called for the establishment of a standing intergovernmental group of experts to address tax issues, including international tax issues, and to assist countries better mobilize and employ fiscal revenues.

This includes international initiatives to counter tax avoidance and tax evasion, as well as strengthening the capabilities of developing countries to address tax avoidance and tax evasion practices.

In Africa alone, the estimated resources leaving the continent, in the form of illicit financial transfers, was nearly 530 billion dollars between 2002 and 2012, according to UNCTAD.

The three key causes of illicit financial outflows are largely commercial tax evasion, government corruption and criminal activity, including money laundering.

Addressing the NGOs, the Ecuadorean Foreign Minister said: “Our government has introduced very redistributive policies in the most unequal continent on earth. Our priority is to fight inequality which is the cause of most of problems we face.”

He pointed out that Ecuador has seen big improvements in living standards over the last decade due to major economic reforms, including a tripling of tax takes achieved overwhelmingly by collecting taxes, not by raising them.

“This has become an important source of investment in public services. The next stage in this battle for a fair economy is against tax havens”

“Tax havens are a real ethical problem. For example, while Ecuadorian migrants loyally work long hours to send remittances to Ecuador, an elite section of the population siphons billions of dollars back out of the country to tax havens,” he noted.

The Washington DC panel discussion was co-sponsored by several NGOs, including Jubilee USA, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center of Concern, FACT Coalition, Financial Transparency Coalition, Latindadd, Global Alliance for Tax Justice Network, Public Citizen, the Latin American and Caribbean Tax Justice Network.

The topic under discussion was titled: “Tax Avoidance, Illicit Financial Flows and Global Development: A Call for a United Nations Tax Body”.

According to a press release, several experts, including Eric LeCompte, Jubilee USA; Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Elise Bean, Former Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent subCommittee on investigations; Aldo Caliari, Center of Concern; and Clark Gascoigne, FACT Coalition gave their support to the Ecuadorean initiatives on tax havens.

The event moderator Eric LeCompte, Director of Jubilee USA, told the panel discussion: “This conversation today comes at a critical moment. Due to tax evasion and corruption the developing world loses more than a trillion dollars a year because of tax evasion and corruption.”

“These tax issues are a global problem and require a global solution. Addressing tax havens is like a carnival game of whack-a-mole. You deal with problem in one place and it pops up in another.”

Economist Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) said: “Latin America did go through a decade where poverty was reduced from 44 to 28 % in the region as a whole. The standard narrative is that this was just a commodities boom.”

“Ecuador is probably the best example of why that is really not true. They had to do a whole set of institutional, policy and financial reforms in order to achieve the success that they did, and they did achieve success. They have reduced poverty by 30% by 2014. They reduced inequality. They increased access to healthcare. They tripled the amount of GDP that went to public investment.”

He also said that Ecuador was able to build the institutions and do enormous financial and regulatory reforms that we could use here in the United States. They took control of the financial system and regulated it really for the first time in the way it should be regulated. I think the referendum on tax havens is very creative and innovative.”

Aldo Caliari, Director of the REthinking Bretton Woods Project, Center of Concern said: “The battle for an intergovernmental body was not won in Addis Ababa. We need to keep struggling. A UN intergovernmental body is about who defines the rules of the game”.

“I salute the efforts” of Ecuador to raise awareness and pressure against tax havens. “I like the significance of the fact that Ecuador, with this mindset of achieving progress, is taking over the G77 presidency, because it is critical.”

Elise Bean, former Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on investigations welcomed Ecuador’s work against tax havens saying: “One of the really interesting things is about how Ecuador is giving us an example about how if you strengthen the capacity to collect taxes it really contributes to stability, to the ability to fight poverty. This culture of paying taxes is a remarkable achievement and is something that should be studied and I think we should try to replicate it elsewhere.”

“I have tremendous admiration for Ecuador, to show that it is possible to build a culture of paying taxes. I congratulate you on your country’s progress.”

Clark Gascoigne, Deputy Director of the FACT Coalition said: “Illicit financial flows have a devastating impact on developing countries, wringing tens of billions of dollars out of the developing world. But also have a major effect on developed countries. $150 billion dollars is the most recent estimate of the cost to the US from tax haven abuse annually. This of course exacerbates inequality, leads to austerity and undermines our ability to act collectively and solve problems.”

Porter McConnell, Director of the Financial Transparency Initiative said after the meeting: “I have been very impressed by the leadership that Ecuador has demonstrated on this issue of tax havens and on the issue of illicit financial flows more widely”.

“We have been working with the government of Ecuador for some months to draw attention to the issue and to support the leadership role of Ecuador in the G77. We are very excited to see what comes next and are very supportive of the efforts of Ecuador,” McConnell said.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Peter Thomson, President of the UN General Assembly.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1 2016 (IPS)

Development should be about more than building roads or buying air conditioners, the President of the UN General Assembly, Peter Thomson told IPS in a recent interview.

Thomson, who started his career working as “a rural development man in Fiji” says he had become disillusioned with development before the Sustainable Development Goals came along.

After studying development studies at Cambridge Thomson returned to Fiji where he spent much of the 1970s working in villages for the Fiji government: “digging pit latrines and building sea walls.”

However he began to feel disillusioned by development when he saw that it ultimately led to communities breaking up. Young people would leave to sell produce at the markets on newly constructed roads, and then eventually would stop coming back.

“I got quite disillusioned with this whole idea of this is what humanity is set on: growth (where) every government had to produce growth and every government had to put in roads.”

“It just seemed we were covering all our best agricultural land with urban sprawl.”

However Thomson believes that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – which UN member states have agreed to implement between 2016 and 2030 – represent a different paradigm, as for example shown in goal 12 – which promotes responsible consumption and production.

He observes how Fiji has become reliant on air conditioners which didn’t even exist there 30 years ago.
“We were brought up to sleep in a room that had cross breeze.”

As President of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly from September 2016 until September 2017, representing his home country of Fiji, Thomson is now tasked with leading the second year of implementation of the goals among UN member states.

He sees the sustainability aspect of the development goals as being about ensuring that his grandchildren’s generation will have a future on this planet.

“With that sustainability added to development you have a future for humanity, as opposed to what we’re on at the moment which is just this path towards (economic growth).”

“Now the goal is give them a sustainable future, do not accept that it’s ok to steal from future generations, make sure that every development is going to produce a better life for your grandchildren.”

However Thomson acknowledges that achieving all 17 of the goals will not be easy.

“I still think the stakes are very high in that there are elements of the SDGs which are not necessarily attainable, but we have to nevertheless fight for their attainment.”

Two targets he notes will be particularly difficult to achieve are Goal 13 on Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels, and Goal 14 on ocean acidification.

In order to achieve the goals Thomson now believes that it is important that they go beyond the four walls of the UN General Assembly.

“I see the SDGs as rights and responsibilities of people (but) you can’t fight for your rights unless you know what they are and at present the great majority of humanity does not know what the SDGs are.”

Realising the goals will also require a complete rethink of development funding.

“It’s not just throw some money at the SDGs it’s how do you transform the financial system to make it financially sustainable?” says Thomson, noting that the current financial system will collapse at a certain point if it continues on its current trajectory.

“At a point somewhere between three percent and four percent of CO2 levels over pre-industrial age the insurance industry stops functioning because they just can’t handle the risk,” he says.

Achieving the goals therefore requires transforming the global financial system so that the world’s capital – the majority of which is handled by about half a dozen firms – is invested in long term rather than short term projects, he said.

Thomson sees the role of Official Development Assistance – the official term for government aid – as being more effective when it is used to encourage private sector investment, an idea which he says is gaining traction at the UN.

However he also notes that addressing tax cooperation is also needed.

“I’ve seen the calculations on Africa. If they had proper taxation on their wealth Official Development Assistance isn’t even a toenail compared with what good taxation would produce for governments to build schools and roads.”

Tax cooperation has been an issue particularly of interest to the 133 developing countries at the UN which form the Group of 77 or G77.

Thomson a former Chair of the group in 2013, believes that tax cooperation will be a key issue for Ecuador which will chair the group from January 2017.

At the heart of the G77 he says is the objective of equity.

“The fact that we do come together eventually – after long discussions, in common positions, not always but most of the time, is because everybody believes in this principle of equity in this world.”

“The fact is that there’s still so much to do to bring developing countries into an equitable position in the community of nations so that’s the grand work of the G77.”

“I think there’s also a recognition within the UN system that the G77 is necessary because you always think about a house of parliament there’s got to be government and opposition to argue through to get progress.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the commemoration event for the 30th anniversary of Declaration on Right to Development. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 28 2016 (IPS)

As the United Nations commemorated the 30^th anniversary of the “Right to Development”, the Group of 77 (G77) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) expressed strong collective support for one of the basic human rights described as a key element in the implementation of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda.

“Development as a human right is still an unfulfilled promise for billions of people,” said a joint statement issued September 22 by two of the largest economic and political groupings at the United Nations.

The 133-member G77 (joined by China) and the 120-member NAM said 30 years ago, “we recognized the human person as the central subject of the development process and  therefore development policy should make the human being the main participant and beneficiary of development.”  And it placed people at the center of development while demanding equal opportunities and equitable distribution of economic resources.

Since then, said the joint statement, the international community has embraced the concept of “people-centred” development.

At the same time, it has recognized that, despite continuous efforts on the part of the international community, “the gap between developed and developing countries remains unacceptably wide, that most of the developing countries continue to face difficulties in participating in the globalization process and that many risk being marginalized and effectively excluded from its benefits.”

The resolution on the ‘Declaration on the Right to Development’ was adopted at the 97^th plenary meeting of the General Assembly back in December 1986.

Addressing a high level meeting of the General Assembly commemorating the 30^th anniversary of the Right to Development on September 22, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said despite great strides forward, developing countries still struggle with the diversification of their economies, international trade, macroeconomic and fiscal issues and ensuring equitable and sustainable frameworks for the use of natural resources.

There are more least developed countries (LDCs) now than in 1986. Even among middle-income countries, few are on paths that can ensure sustained, sustainable and equitable growth and poverty eradication.

Developed countries also face new challenges, such as rising inequality and financial crises, he said.  “We have new prospects for realizing the right to development, thanks to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and SDG 17 on strengthening the means of implementation and revitalizing the global partnership, together with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.”

The 2030 Agenda explicitly recognizes the Declaration of the Right to Development and reflects its spirit. Its emphasis on equality, participation, empowerment and ensuring that no one is left behind, echoes the definition of the right to development as “an inalienable human right”.

It recognizes, like the Declaration, that each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development while affirming that international cooperation and partnership are essential to ensure implementation.

The 2030 Agenda has unprecedented potential to fulfil the aspirations that motivated the Declaration on the Right to Development, and that remain critical to this day.  “Let us celebrate the Declaration for its past – and more importantly for the promise it holds for the future,” Ban declared.

The President of the General Assembly Peter Thomson told the high level meeting that  many of the commitments on the UN’s post-2015 development agenda mirror duties arising from the Declaration on the Right to Development.

It includes a duty on each government to put the well-being of the entire population, and of all individuals, at the heart of their policies and strategies. This includes by ensuring their free and meaningful participation in development efforts and decision-making process, and in the distribution of the resulting benefits.

It includes the duty to remove structural obstacles and to address both historical and contemporary inequities that are holding back developing countries, he noted.

And it includes the need for international cooperation in support of those countries that remain in vulnerable situations – whether they be the least developed countries; those affected by conflict and instability; or those struggling to adapt to the impacts of climate changes, Thomson told delegates.

“As we mark this Anniversary, let us recognize that if we are to realize the Right to Development, we must do so together; working in responsible and ethical partnerships between governments, the UN system, civil society, the private sector and others.”

Addressing the high level meeting, the European Union’s (EU) Special Representative for Human Rights Stavros Lambrindis, said: “We wish to reiterate our support for the right to development, as based on the indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights as outlined in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the multidimensional nature of development strategies and the role of individuals as the central subjects of the development process.”

He pointed out that the EU is fully committed to a rights-based approach to development, encompassing all human rights, including the right to development. The right to development requires the full realisation of civil and political rights, together with economic, social and cultural rights, and a mix of policies, creating an enabling environment for individuals, involving a wide range of actors, at all levels.

“We emphasise that the primary responsibility for ensuring that the right to development is realised is one owed by States to their citizens. We must recognize that divergent views in the understanding of the right to development remain.”

But he re-stated the EU position that it is not in favour of the elaboration of an international legal standard of a binding nature “as we do not believe that this is the appropriate mechanism to realise the right to development.”

With its universal applicability and its importance in shaping development priorities, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development will open up new avenues to integrate human rights into global and national policies in both developed and developing countries over the next 15 years, he added.

Meanwhile, in its joint statement, the G77 and NAM said the Right to Development is crucial to the three agreements reached last year: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development (FfD) and the Paris Climate Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which have vowed to “leave no one behind.”

“There is no doubt that in order for us to reach that goal, the right to development must be central to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development taking into account countries and peoples who face specific challenges, in particular, African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States as well as specific challenges that many middle-income countries face, as well as countries facing conflict and post-conflict situations, humanitarian emergencies, the effects of climate change and global pandemics.”

The statement also said “We must take resolute steps to eliminate the massive and flagrant violations of human rights of peoples and human beings affected by situations such as those resulting from apartheid, all forms of racism and racial discrimination, colonialism, foreign domination and occupation, aggression, foreign interference and threats against national sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity, threats of war and refusal to recognize the fundamental right of peoples to self-determination.”

According to the statement, the 30^th Anniversary coincided with the first year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.  “So it is an opportune time to demonstrate and reiterate our unequivocal commitment to the right to development, in particular the need to strive for greater acceptance, operationalization and the realization of this right at the international level.”

“We must continue our efforts also, to mainstream this right in our work at the national and regional level and in the United Nations, particularly in the Human Rights mechanisms, as well as international financial and multilateral trading systems in the context of the elaboration of their policies in line with the 2030 Agenda.”

One of the recurring themes in recent conversations and panel discussions was the understanding that the realization of the right to development is a necessity now, more than ever.  “The ambitious goals we have committed ourselves to, the massive challenges and violations of human rights caused by situations resulting from, among others, unilateral coercive measures and unfair sanctions, can only be reached and overcome if we embrace the tenets of the Declaration.”

In this regard, the statement said: “We urge all States to expand and deepen mutually benefiting cooperation with each other in promotingdevelopment and eliminating obstacles to it, in the context of promoting an effective international co-operation for the realization of the right to development, bearing in mind that lasting progress towards the implementation of the right to development requires effective development policies at the national level as well as equitable economic relations and a favorable economic environment at the international level; and to work together towards the elaboration and adoption of a Convention on the Right to Development.”

The G77 and NAM pointed out there are different approaches, visions, models and tools available to each country to achieve sustainable development, in accordance with its national circumstances and priorities as well as its own development context.

“It is our collective hope that on this auspicious 30^th Anniversary of this landmark Declaration, we are rightly reminded of the work that still needs to be done to realize this fundamental right.”

The G77 Newswire is published with the support of the G77 Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation (PGTF) in partnership with Inter Press Service (IPS).

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon talks with Prayut Chan-o-cha, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand and Chair of the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77.

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 27 2016 (IPS)

The 133-member Group of 77 (G77), joined by China, unanimously endorsed a Ministerial Declaration strongly reiterating its support to the UN’s post-2015 development agenda, including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the Climate Change agreement.

The Declaration, which was adopted at the 40th annual meeting of G77 Foreign Ministers on September 23, reaffirmed “the overarching objective of eradication of poverty in all its forms and dimensions,” describing it as “the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.”

Reiterating that poverty eradication is a central imperative of the UN’s Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Ministers emphasized “the need to address poverty in all its forms and dimensions in order to truly leave no one behind.”

The targeted deadline for the eradication of poverty worldwide is 2030.

General Prayut Chan-O-Cha (Ret), Prime Minister of Thailand and G77 chair of the Ministerial Meeting said: “This year, we have together taken the first steps in translating vision into concrete action, in line with developing countries’ needs and interests and to realize the SDGs.”

Since the start of this year, he pointed out, the Group has played an active role in implementing the 2030 Agenda through (1) negotiating a resolution on Follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the global level; (2) reviewing global agenda outcomes under the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development; (3) following-up on Financing for Development (FfD); (4) determining a global indicator framework for SDGs; (5) supporting implementation of the Agenda in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) through negotiating a political declaration for the High-Level Mid-term Review according to the Istanbul Programme of Action for LDCs; and (6) strengthening cooperation among developing countries on the High-Level Meeting on South-South Cooperation.

Addressing the meeting, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the key role played by the G77 in the adoption of both the SDGs and the Climate Change agreement last year.

The United Nations and the G-77 have an invaluable partnership, he told the Ministers. ”Together, we have made enormous progress for human rights and human dignity.”

Singling out the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development on September 29, Ban said the G-77 was also a driving force behind the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – “our truly transformative plan for the planet and all people.”

“Many G-77 countries also helped push for the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Thank you for this advocacy,” he said.

Ban pointed out that G-77 kept its distinctive name even after the membership expanded to 133 countries, joined by China (from the original 77). ”In the same way, I hope you keep the Group’s founding spirit to stand up for the countries of the South while expanding your engagement to tackle emerging threats. “

With this mix of timeless values and timely action, he declared, “we can build on our proud record and leave a better world for generations to come. Thank you for your leadership and commitment.”

40th Annual Declaration

Some of the key elements of the Declaration include the following:

The Ministers highlighted that the year 2016 marked the first year of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development towards a sustainable future. Thus, it is important to show the international community the Group’s continued unwavering commitments to further translate ambitions set out in the Agenda into real actions.

In this context, the Ministers noted that 2017 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first Ministerial Meeting of the Group of 77 which adopted in October 1967 the “Charter of Algiers”, the first platform of the G-77 calling for joint efforts by developing countries towards economic and social development, peace and prosperity.

The Ministers welcomed the progress made by Member States in their national  implementation, but stressed that implementing the 2030 Agenda at all levels requires a revitalized global partnership and the full implementation of the 17th Sustainable Development Goal, which is dedicated to this purpose.

In this context, said the Declaration, enhancing support to developing countries is fundamental, including through provision of development financial resources, transfer of technology on favorable terms including on concessional and preferential terms, enhanced international support and targeted capacity-building and promoting a rules-based and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system.

The Ministers urged the international community and relevant stakeholders to make real progress in these issues, including developing action plans to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

They appreciated the G20 2016 Summit, which took place in Hangzhou, China in September 4-5, being the first G20 Summit which took place in a developing country after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with broad participation of developing countries, including the Chair of G77, which endorsed the G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as an important contribution to the global implementation of the 2030 Agenda

The Ministers also approved the Report of the 31st Meeting of the Committee of Experts of the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation (PGTF) and endorsed its recommendations.

The Ministers commended the Chairman of the PGTF for his continued commitment and expressed their satisfaction with the results achieved by the PGTF.

In light of the substantial decrease in the interest earnings of the Fund caused by the current world financial situation, as reported by the Chairman of the PGTF, the Ministers appealed to every Member State to make a significant contribution to the PGTF on the occasion of the UN Pledging Conference for Development Activities to be held in New York on 7 November 2016.

Thailand, ahead of the conference, made a contribution of $520,000 to the PGTF.

The Ministers noted the commemoration of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) + 40 to be held in 2018 which represented an opportunity to enhance the current institutional arrangements to better support South-South cooperation and promote the South-South agenda.

In this context, the Ministers strongly recommended the consolidation of existing mechanisms of South-South cooperation and called for the establishment of a United Nations specialized agency for South-South cooperation to be located in a developing country.

The Ministers underlined that the achievement of the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda will depend on enabling international environment for development, facilitating the necessary means of implementation, particularly in the areas of finance, international trade, technology and capacity-building to developing countries.

In this regard, they called for a sincere and effective follow up on global commitments of all actors, particularly developed countries.

The Declaration also said there was a dire need for development partners to meet their current official development  assistance  (ODA) commitments  and  to  upscale  these  in  support  of  the aspirations that have been set under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Fortieth Annual Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77. Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

The Ministers reasserted that developing  countries  will  continue  to  advocate  for additional  funding  for  development  to  be  made  available,  with  North-South cooperation central to these efforts

While commending the few countries who reach the ODA target, the Ministers stressed the need to urgently address the unmet ODA commitments since North-South Cooperation is still the main channel of financing for development for developing countries.

They noted with concern that efforts and genuine will to address these issues are still lagging behind as reflected in the 2016 outcome document of the Financing for Development forum which failed to address these important issues.

The Ministers reaffirmed the paramount importance of ODA in supporting the sustainable development needs of developing countries, in particular African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, small islands developing States and the middle-income countries and countries in conflict and post-conflict situations.

In this context, developed countries must commit to fully implementing their ODA commitments in keeping with their previously made undertakings and to upscale these efforts to play a meaningful role in eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions. The Ministers called for the global partnership for development to be revitalized and reinvigorated.

The Ministers reiterated their position that South-South cooperation is a complement to, rather than a substitute for, North-South cooperation, and reaffirmed that South-South cooperation is a collective endeavour of developing countries and that, consequently, South-South cooperation deserves its own separate and independent promotion, as reaffirmed in the Nairobi outcome document.

In this context, the Ministers stressed that South-South cooperation and its agenda must be driven by the countries of the South. South-South cooperation, which is critical for developing countries, therefore requires long-term vision and a global institutional arrangement, as envisioned at the Second South Summit.

The Ministers stressed that developing countries attach importance to scaling up international tax cooperation and combating illicit financial flows in order to mobilize domestic resources for the SDGs.

The Ministers welcomed the convening of the G-77 Bangkok Roundtable on Sufficiency Economy: An Approach to Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, held in Bangkok, Thailand on 28-29 February 2016 and the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy in Business: A G-77 Forum on the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, held in Bangkok, Thailand on 1-2 June 2016.

They noted that there are different approaches, visions, models and tools available to each country to achieve sustainable development, in accordance with its national circumstances and priorities as well as its own development context.

And, in this regard, welcomed the initiative by the Kingdom of Thailand to share its development experience and promote partnership among G-77 members on implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular through applying the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) as an approach for sustainable development that focuses on transforming the economics of exploitation into the economics of moderation, resilience and self-immunity guided by knowledge as well as ethics and moral consideration with a view to harmonizing the economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects of development.

The Ministers welcomed the fruitful and productive discussion from the interactive thematic dialogue on SEP for Sustainable Development Goals convened on the occasion of the Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Group of 77 under the leadership of the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand as chair country of the Group of 77.

They noted the various experiences and home-grown approaches to achieve the SDGs and the importance of learning and sharing of best practices including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation.

They recognized the SEP as a practical approach that can support the implementation and achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and its universality underscored by its successful application in various development projects in a number of G-77 countries, including “SEP for SDGs Partnership”

The Ministers reaffirmed the importance of respect for the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, in particular of peoples living under colonial or foreign occupation and other forms of alien domination, which adversely affects their social and economic development, respect for the independence of States, national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of States, including through the use of information and communications technologies, in particular social networks, contrary to the principles of international law, for the effective guarantee and observance of human rights, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and embodied in the international covenants on human rights, and stress that full respect for the principles and purposes enshrined in the Charter and international law inspire full commitment to multilateralism.

The Ministers reaffirmed that the right of self-determination is a primordial right that anchors the United Nations. For developing countries, it has been and continues to be a beacon of hope for all those who struggle under the weight of occupation.

In this context, in the implementation and the follow-up and review of 2030 Agenda, the international community must not forget the severe difficulties faced by peoples living under colonial and foreign occupation and strive to remove the obstacles to their full realization of the right of self-determination, which adversely affect their economic and social development and their ability to achieve and implement the sustainable development goals and to ensure that they will not be left behind.

The Ministers stressed the importance of eliminating safe havens that create incentives for transfer abroad of stolen assets and illicit financial flows. They reiterated their commitment to working to strengthen regulatory frameworks at all levels to further increase transparency and accountability of financial institutions and the corporate sector, as well as public administrations.

The Ministers reaffirmed that they would strengthen international cooperation and national institutions to combat money-laundering and financing of terrorism.

The Ministers expressed their concern over illicit financial flows and related thereto tax avoidance and evasion, corruption and money laundering, by using certain practices, with negative impacts for the world economy and, in particular, for developing countries.

They maintained that, while there is increasing recognition of the central role of tax systems in development and the importance of international cooperation on tax matters, there is still no single global inclusive forum for international tax cooperation at the intergovernmental level.  There is also not enough focus on the development dimension of these issues.

In this context, the Ministers reiterated the need to fully upgrade the United Nations Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters into an intergovernmental body and to provide adequate resources to the Committee to fulfill its mandate as well as increase the participation of experts of developing countries at its meetings.

This will be critical in transforming the current Committee from experts acting in their own capacity to an intergovernmental subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council, with experts representing their respective Governments.

The G77 Newswire is published with the support of the G77 Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation (PGTF) in partnership with Inter Press Service (IPS).

Presentation by Prime Minister of Thailand Prayuth Chan-o-cha Thailand's pledged contribution to Eduardo Praselj, President of the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation (PGTF). Credit: UN Photo/Amanda Voisard

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2016 (IPS)

On Friday, a group of 134 developing nations, known as the Group of 77 (G77), came together for a meeting to address challenges and solutions in achieving sustainable development. In attendance were G-77 Foreign Ministers, the President of the General Assembly, the UN Secretary-General and other UN senior officials.

During the 40th Annual Meeting of Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, whose country is currently Chair of the group, highlighted the need to translate the vision of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into concrete action in line with developing nations’ needs and interests.

“There is no one size fits all approach for development,” he told delegates.

Prime Minister Chan-o-cha pointed to several resources to ensure the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including human resources.

“Human beings are full of potential and are the source of innovation and creativity. The challenge is how to tap that potential,” he said. Prime Minister Chan-o-cha looked to education and the improvement of quality of life as ways to build human capacity.

Another key challenge that arose during the meeting was ensuring equal participation of developing nations in discussions and solutions.

Prime Minister Chan-o-cha expressed his delight in being invited for the first time to the recent G20 Summit in China and called it an “opportunity” for the G77 and developing nations to be heard. However, he still stressed the need to build a global partnership within and beyond developing nations.

“Thailand, as a Chair of the Group, is working as a bridge-builder among all actors that share the same goal in creating a better world, a world without poverty,” he stated. He added that developed nations should assist G77 countries through short-term assistance and capacity building to pave the way for a long-term outcome with the group’s needs in mind.

During the meeting The Kingdom of Thailand made a contribution of 520,000 US dollars to the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund (PGTF) for South-South Cooperation. The fund supports economic and technical cooperation among developing countries.

President of the 71st Session of the General Assembly (GA) Peter Thomson particularly underlined the importance of cooperation within the Global South.

“South-South cooperation represents the best expression of solidarity and interdependence among developing countries, and will be pivotal in complementing North-South, public and private SDG-implementation initiatives,” he told delegates in his opening address.

Thomson was Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the UN, making him the first GA President from the Pacific Islands. Fiji is also a member of the G77.

Ecuador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Guillaume Long told delegates that there needs to be a “re-founding” of the multilateral system in order to increase solidarity.

“We need a UN with more voices and fewer vetoes,” he stated.

“The Global South’s cause is a universal cause for all mankind,” Long continued.

Ecuador is next in line for chairmanship of the G77 in January 2017, which marks the first time the country will assume the position.

The G77, which began with 77 nations, has since grown to include 134 member states from around the world. It has become the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the UN, allowing the Global South to express their needs and promote cooperation for development.

Both Thomson and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon noted that the G77 is an “indispensable” and “invaluable” partner of the UN.

Thailand will continue as chair of the G77 until the end of December 2016.

During the meeting Prime Minister Chan-o-cha also presented an award to G77Executive Secretary Mourad Ahmia to express appreciation for his leadership andsupport provided by the G77 Secretariat team to the Kingdom of Thailand as Chair country and to all the Member States.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) meets with Virachai Plasai, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Thailand to the United Nations and Chair of the Group of 77. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 1 2016 (IPS)

IPS spoke with the Virachai Plasai, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Thailand to the United Nations and Chair of the Group of 77 about what it’s like to represent 134 developing countries, including China, at UN meetings in New York. Plasai spoke about some of the group’s priorities for 2016, including the selection of the ninth UN Secretary-General, the 2030 Development Agenda, including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and the implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

IPS: The UN is currently selecting a Secretary-General for 2017 and G77 members have had the opportunity to question most of the candidates. Has this process been beneficial to G77 members? Do you think that this new, more open selection process will help ensure that the next Secretary-General will be somebody who understands the interests of developing countries?

Ambassador Plasai: The selection and appointment of the Secretary-General this year benefits from efforts to bring greater transparency and openness to the process, which G77 wholeheartedly support.

Of particular importance is the informal dialogues with candidates organised by the President of the General Assembly as mandated by the General Assembly. The Chair of G77 and several G77 members took part actively in these informal dialogues by posing questions on issues of interest to developing countries to the candidates. In addition, the Group have positively responded to the request from the candidates who wished to present their vision as Secretary-General to the Group and interact with the Group members.

These exercises have brought issues of concern for G77 members to the attention of the candidates. We can thus reasonably expect that the successful candidate will be well aware of the issues of concern for developing countries.

IPS: How would you describe the role of the G77 at the UN in ensuring early implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development?

Plasai: The G77 have been committed to and have contributed constructively in ensuring early implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The Group has called for a sincere and effective follow up on global commitments of all actors, particularly developed countries. We believe that the United Nations has a critical role to play in urging national leaders and actors to follow up on their commitments, especially in the Financing for Development Forum and the High Level Political Forum (HLPF).

In this regard, the Group called for an intergovernmental process to discuss the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda in the form of a General Assembly resolution. The Group advocates for the following points in such a process:

All 17 goals are integrated and indivisible, ambitious and evolving. The review should be systematic, and promotes a holistic understanding of the significant interlinkages across the goals and targets.

All inputs and reports, including from functional commissions, should be fed into the HLPF.

It is up to each Member State to decide how to present the voluntary national review at the HLPF. It is important not to overburden countries, especially those with limited capacities and resources.

The follow-up and review at the regional level and sub-regional levels can, as appropriate, provide opportunities for peer learning, sharing of best practices and discussions on shared targets. It is important to build on existing mechanisms.

It is important to reinforce the existing modalities of Groups of countries in special situations, including the most vulnerable ones, in particular LDCs, LLDCs, SIDS and African countries. Particular challenges facing the middle-income countries in achieving SDGs should also be recognized and supported by the international community. Moreover, we must not leave peoples and countries under foreign occupation behind.

The UN system must support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda by ensuring coherent and integrated support of the system-wide strategic planning implementation and reporting.

The Secretariat must support member states in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and must not work in silos.

IPS: The high-level signature ceremony for the Paris Agreement took place in New York on 22 April 2016 – what were some of the highlights of the day for the G77?

Plasai: The Group highlighted the following key points:

First, the Agreement is a result of the collective and tireless efforts of all parties working constructively in a spirit of compromise. It represents a step forward in our efforts on climate change.

Second, we must not forget the urgent need to enhance pre-2020 ambition, including the ratification of the Doha amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, which will provide a strong basis for post-2020 efforts under the Paris Agreement. We also need to address the significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with the target to holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. We should also make efforts to limit this temperature increase to 1.5º C.

Third, the focus now should both be on the entry into force of the Paris Agreement and on delivering the major tasks to enhance pre-2020 implementation. This includes action on adaptation which is an urgent priority for developing countries. Financing for adaptation is critical; and securing the continued role of the Adaptation Fund pre 2020 and beyond 2020 is welcomed and should be enhanced.

Fourth, on mitigation, developed countries should continue taking the lead by undertaking and increasing economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets for their pledges and nationally determined contributions (NDCs). For developing countries, capacity-building support for climate action is critical. This support should be based on and responsive to national needs and country ownership. The process of capacity-building must be participatory, country-driven, and cross-cutting. Enhanced financial and technological support from developed countries will allow effective implementation and enhance ambition of developing countries.

Fifth, transformation of our economies to low carbon development pathways requires adequate, predictable and sustainable climate financing. Means of implementation is a key pillar for the implementation of the Agreement. We welcome the approval of the first projects by the Green Climate Fund. We envision that a substantive decision on increasing climate finance will be an important outcome of COP 22 in Morocco.

IPS: What are the challenges and opportunities for the Group of 77 with regard to the global indicator framework for the 2030 Agenda?

Plasai: The challenge is that the development of the global indicators is a technical process which should continue to be led by the national Statistical Offices. At the same time, it has political implications. We believe that the political balance and ambition of the 2030 Agenda should be preserved without reinterpreting the scope or intent of the targets. The tricky part is that our national Statistical Offices need to understand the inherent political sensitivity of the SDG negotiations.

In this regard, we need to avoid undue haste to prematurely conclude the work of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals Indicators (IAEG-SDGs). The adoption of the Report of the IAEG-SDGs by the Statistical Commission in March is just a starting point of the work on the global indicators. Further methodological work will be required with a view to continuously improving the indicators and the availability of data to address their shortcomings.

The opportunity lies in our insistence for a coordinated effort in the United Nations System to enhance statistical capacity in developing countries. Capacity-building is needed to strengthen statistical capacities at national and sub-national levels.

IPS: Achieving the SDGs will require a rethinking of how public and private funds are spent. In 2015, G77 countries called for global tax cooperation as one way to help governments in developing countries to increase their budgets. Is establishing a global tax cooperation body still a priority for the G77 countries? How will tax cooperation help developing countries to fund the SDGs?

G77 have continuously urged an upgrade of the Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters to an inter-governmental subsidiary body.

We believe that such a global tax body can contribute to a coherent global tax system, less double taxation and double-non-taxation, stronger implementation, fair and consistent global action against tax havens, and more financing for development in the poorest countries.

Besides, such a global tax cooperation body will also allow all Member States to take part in and make decisions on tax matters, on a truly equal footing, and in a more accountable and transparent manner. This is all the more important in light of the recent high-profile international tax evasion cases.

It can be expected that such a global tax cooperation body can result in more effective tax policy and a more efficient domestic tax collection. At the same time, unfair international tax distortion and tax evasion can be reduced. More effective mobilization of domestic resources undoubtedly benefits the implementation of SDGs, and thus should be part of national sustainable development strategies.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) poses for a photo with Uhuru Kenyatta (centre), President of the Republic of Kenya, and Mukhisa Kituyi, Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), at the opening of the fourteenth UNCTAD session, taking place in Nairobi, 17-22 July 2016. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2016 (IPS/G77)

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) concluded its five-day meeting in Nairobi on a positive note—the launch of a new e-trade initiative and a multi-donor trust fund on trade and productive capacity.

The meeting, attended by more than 5,000 delegates from 149 countries, also launched the first UN statistical report on specific indicators on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a commitment for a roadmap on fisheries subsidies.

The negotiations ended in the early hours of July 22 after two marathon all-night sessions. The resulting Nairobi consensus, “the Maafikiano”, also sets UNCTAD’s work programme for the next four years.

Billed as UNCTAD 14, the conference was formally opened by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in the presence of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and the vice-President of Uganda, Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi.

The meeting also launched the 2016 report on ‘Economic Development in Africa’, and highlighted issues around non-tariff measures, debt, and illicit financial flows, along with a fashion show focusing on the creative and commercial potential of Kenya’s fashion industry.

In his opening address, the Secretary-General warned about the “worrying signs that people around the world are increasingly unhappy with the state of the global economy.”

He said high inequality, stagnant incomes, lack of enough jobs – especially for youth — and too little cause for optimism stoke legitimate fears for the future for many in all regions.

“The global trade slowdown and a lack of productive investment have sharpened the deep divides between those who have benefited from globalization, and those who continue to feel left behind. “

And rather than working to change the economic model for the better, Ban said, many actual and would-be leaders are instead embracing protectionism and even xenophobia.

“The vision set out in the SDGs – for people, planet, prosperity and peace – will not succeed if shocks and stresses in our global economic and financial system are not properly addressed,” he noted.

Trade must provide prosperity in ways that work for people and planet and respond to the challenges of climate change, said Ban.

A Ministerial Declaration adopted by the 134 members of the Group of 77 and China on the occasion of UNCTAD addressed the “key issues that are of major concern to developing countries,” said Apichart Chinwanno, Permanent Secretary And Special Envoy Of The Minister Of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom Of Thailand, speaking on Behalf of ‘The Group Of 77 and China In New York’.

“These (key issues) include the need to tackle subsidies and various forms of market access restrictions, tax evasion and tax avoidance, illicit capital flows, sovereign debt crisis as well as the need to uphold principles of equity, inclusiveness, common but differentiated responsibilities, special and differential treatment, and the right to development, just to name a few,” said Chinwanno at a Ministerial Meeting Of The Group Of 77 held on the occasion Of UNCTAD in Nairobi on July 17.

“International financial institutions, which are one of the main sources of financing for development of developing countries, need to be universal, rule-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable,” added Chinwanno.

Chinwanno also noted that Official Development Assistance (ODA) remains at an average of just “0.29% of the aggregate donor Gross National Income in 2014, well below the commitment of 0.7%.”

According to an UNCTAD press release, this year’s conference, with the tagline “From decision to action”, had added significance because it was the first UNCTAD conference since the global community established the Sustainable Development Goals and mandated – via the Addis Ababa Action Agenda – with UNCTAD as one of five international organizations to mobilize financing for development.”

The other four organizations are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

Martin Khor, Executive Director of the Geneva-based South Centre said an important aspect of today’s global economy is that the economic weight of the South has undeniably increased, with China and India accounting for a large share of this increase.

He said developing countries as a whole are more integrated into the world economy.  However, these changes have not yet constituted a full scale shift in the global landscape.

The development gap between the North and the South still exists, even exacerbated for some countries.  The task of bridging this gap is becoming more complex and difficult in today’s global economic environment, he cautioned.

Throughout the various major international negotiations that took place last year that resulted in the recently concluded international outcomes like the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement, the South continuously highlighted the need to close the development gap faster and in a more sustainable and equitable manner, he noted.

“None of these outcomes of the international community could have been achieved without the support and leadership of the Group of 77 and China,” said Khor.

“I’m delighted that our 194 member states have been able to reach this consensus, giving a central role to UNCTAD in delivering the sustainable development goals,” UNCTAD Secretary-General, Mukhisa Kituyi, said, just after the conclusion of the meeting.

“With this document, we can get on with the business of cutting edge analysis, building political consensus, and providing the necessary technical assistance that will make globalization and trade work for billions of people in the global south,” he said.

UNCTAD14 President, Amina Mohamed, said: “As the President of this conference, I cannot begin to tell you how I feel right now.”

“It’s a good day for Kenya, a good day for UNCTAD, and a big win for multilateralism,” she said.

The President of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft. Credit: Lyndal Rowlands / IPS.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 29 2016 (IPS)

The President of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, has helped spearhead a push for a more open and transparent selection process for the next UN Secretary-General.

IPS spoke with Lykketoft one week after the 15 members of the UN Security Council cast their first votes in a straw poll to indicate which of the 12 candidates for the UN’s top job they support.

The results of the informal initial vote, which took place on Thursday 21 July, were not publicly released, but were leaked almost immediately.

Since the results were leaked, the straw polls only have a “formality of secrecy”, Lykketoft told IPS.

On behalf of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly, Lykketoft publicly called for the Security Council to convey the results to the other UN member states soon after the vote took place.

However Lykketoft also noted that the straw polls are an initial vote and that the positioning of candidates may well change, noting that new candidates may also emerge.

“It’s much too early to draw conclusions from the straw polls,” said Lykketoft. “Positioning and tendencies … can change over time.”

A second straw poll is planned for next Friday August 5, he added. However one potential further candidate, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on July 29 that he would not be running, as he did not receive an endorsement from the Australian government.

“We’ll try to arrange as quickly as possible, if a new candidate comes forward, the same kind of hearings that we have had with the 12 candidates,” he said.

However while the informal dialogues have opened up the selection process for the next Secretary-General to the 193 member General Assembly, it is still likely that the UN Security Council will ultimately decide a single candidate to put forward to the assembly for endorsement.

There have been calls for the Security Council to break with this custom and put forward more than one candidate to the General Assembly, however Lykketoft noted that any change to the current system was up to the Security Council, and that it wasn’t even clear whether the “majority of the General Assembly would ask for more candidates.”

“The real influence from the membership is now to express to their colleagues in the Security Council if they have preferences among the candidates,” said Lykketoft.

“Because we’ve had these informal dialogues, these hearings, we much better know the personalities and the priorities of candidates than one did at any previous occasion, simply because all the other times there wasn’t an established list of candidates, we didn’t even know outside the Security Council which names were brought to the table.”

“That has changed and that means also that all the friends, allies and colleagues of the members of the Security Council can express to them their priorities and that gives a real possibility for influence.”

“I have also said continuously if among the many candidates (there are) clear favourites, I don’t think the Security Council would come up with some quite different names. But we’ll see.”

António Guterres (centre), former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and candidate for the position of next United Nations Secretary-General, addresses the Group of 77 in a closed meeting at UN Headquarters in New York. Also seated on the panel, from left, are: Álvaro José Costa de Mendonça e Moura, Permanent Representative of Portugal to the UN; Virachai Plasai, Permanent Representative of Thailand to the UN, and Chairperson of the Group of 77 (G-77); and Mourad Ahmia, Executive Secretary of the Group of 77 Secretariat. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

In addition to consultations with the General Assembly as a whole, candidates for Secretary-General had separate consultations with the 134 members of the Group of 77, as well as with the regional groups, which Lykketoft described as a “very useful” addition to the selection process.

He noted that members of the Group of 77, which represents 134 developing countries at the United Nations including China, see development issues and climate change as priorities.

This was reflected in questions posed to the 12 candidates for the role of Secretary-General on behalf of the Group during the informal hearings in the General Assembly. Each of the 12 candidates also held closed hearings with the 134 members of the Group of 77 at the UN on 13 and 14 July 2016.

The Presidency of the General Assembly

Reflecting on his own role, Lykketoft touched on changes to the office of the President of the General Assembly.

Fiji has been elected to hold the 71st Presidency of the UN General Assembly, when Denmark’s term finishes in September 2016.

Lykketoft noted that as a Small Island Developing State, Fiji does not have the same resources to draw on to support the office of the President as other richer and bigger countries.

The office of the President of the General Assembly relies on contributions from member states. Lykketoft particularly highlighted the importance of member states seconding staff to the office.

“There’s been 35 people from 26 different countries working in the office of the President of the General Assembly, which is a very interesting and very well functioning operation,” said Lykketoft.

“Most of those people are actually a gift from member states to us.”

Lykketoft said he hoped that more countries would come forward to help support Fiji’s Presidency.

“Hopefully there will be more contributions, in particular from countries of the South, because it’s obvious that Fiji is not a rich and big country themselves.”

He also said that there is “a strong wish” in the General Assembly for the UN to provide more resources to the office, in particular to make sure that information is passed on and recorded between presidencies, he added.

The Candidates

There are currently 12 candidates for the position of UN Secretary-General. They include former heads of state and high-level UN officials.

According to leaked reports, Antonio Guterres, former Prime Minister of Portugal and former head of the UN High Commission for Refugees, topped the first straw poll, with Danilo Turk, former President of Slovenia, placing second and Irina Bokova, of Bulgaria who is currently Director General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) placed third. Other candidates which received “encourages” from 8 or more members of the SC include Srgjan Kerim, of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Vuk Jeremić of the Republic of Serbia and Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of  New Zealand and Administrator of the UN Development Programme.

In addition to the push for the selection of the next Secretary-General to be more open and transparent, there have also been calls for the ninth Secretary-General to be the first to come from Eastern Europe or the first to be a woman.

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa on July 25. Credit: UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 27 2016 (IPS/G77)

Industrialisation in Africa is being driven by African leaders who realise that industries as diverse as horticulture and leather production can help add value to the primary resources they currently export.

This is an “inside driven” process, Li Yong, Director General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) told IPS in a recent interview. “I’ve heard that message from the African leaders.”

The African Union ‘Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want’ sets out a plan to transform the economy of the 54 countries in Africa based on manufacturing, said Li.

The process received support from the UN General Assembly on Monday with a new resolution titled the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (2016-2025).

The resolution was sponsored by the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries and China in collaboration with the African Union, said Li.

“These steps create a momentum that all “industrialization stakeholders” in Africa must take advantage of,” said Li.

The resolution called on UNIDO to work together with the African Union Commission, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and the Economic Commission for Africa to work towards sustainable industrialisation in Africa over the next 10 years.

The types of industrialisation African countries are embracing often involves adding value to the primary commodities, from mining or agriculture, that they are already producing.

It includes horticultural industry, notably in Kenya, Ethiopia and Senegal, beneficiation, adding value to minerals mined in Botswana, and shoe and garment manufacturing in Ethiopia, said Li.

However Li noted that in order to attract foreign investment in industrialisation, developing countries need to “do their homework.”

This can include building the necessary business infrastructure required for new industries in industrial parks.
“We have already seen some countries move ahead with attracting investments into industrial parks (including) Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa,” said Li.

Li pointed to recent examples from Ethiopia and Senegal, where the respective governments have invested millions of dollars in building industrial parks to attract foreign investors that create jobs and exports for these two Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

Currently, there are 48 LDCs around the world, of which 34 are in Africa.

The decent work and value addition that come with industrialisation are considered a key way that these LDCs can grow, transform and diversify their economies and become middle income countries. Most LDCs rely on a handful of primary resources for exports, such as gold or the so-called black golds: oil, coal and coffee.

LDCs in Africa have had “very low and declining shares of manufacturing value added in GDP since the 1970s”, noted Li.
By investing in industry, these countries can add value to their primary exports, including through agro-industry, as is the case in Ethiopia, whose main exports include coffee, gold, leather products and live animals. “Manufacturing connects agriculture to light industry” noted Li, such as through food processing, garments and textiles, wood and leather processing.

Moreover, industrialisation does not necessarily have to be incompatible with the shift to a low carbon economy, said Li, since use of resource and energy efficient production methods and renewable energy in productive activities such as agro-industry, beneficiation, and in manufacturing, in general, will lead the economy onto a low carbon path.

The world’s least developed countries are following in the footsteps of other countries which have already achieved development, in part due to the industrialisation of their economies.

LDCs are “really eager to learn from those countries (that have) already gone through this process so that is why we have established South-South cooperation,” said Li.

However industrialisation does not only benefit the developing countries which want to attract it.

“Firms in today’s manufacturing powerhouses such as China, India and Brazil that are faced with rising wages at home are searching for locations that offer competitive wages, and appropriate infrastructure,” said Li.

With populations in many countries around the world beginning to age, Africa also has a comparative advantage to offer with growing young populations in many African countries.

“With its young and growing population, some indications show that Africa has the potential to become the next region to benefit from industrialization, particularly in labor-intensive manufacturing sectors,” said Li.

By providing employment and opportunities for these young people at home, industrialisation can also address other issues, including migration, inequalities and climate change, noted Li.

“Industry means creating jobs and incomes and industrial jobs partially reduce the pressure on migration and also resolve the root causes,” he said.

The Role of the G77

Li noted that UNIDO works closely with all developing countries, often through the Group of 77 and China, which represents 134 developing countries at the UN.

“The G77 and China has diverse membership, including Least Developed Countries, Land Locked Developing Countries, Small Islands Developing States, and Middle Income Countries, located in almost all regions of the world and with diverse range of priorities with respect to industrial development,” he said.

“In LDCs, labor-intensive manufacturing is promoted to create jobs.”

“In middle-income countries moving up the technology ladder into higher value added manufacturing is targeted.”
This can include collaborations with “science, technology and research and development institutions, targeted foreign investment promotion, and other relevant services,” said Li.

Ministerial Segment of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development Goals. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias.

By an IPS Correspondent
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 2016 (IPS)

UN member states “are going beyond rhetoric and earnestly working to achieve real progress” towards the Sustainable Goals, the members of the Group of 77 and China said in a ministerial statement delivered here on 18 July.

The statement was delivered by Ambassador Virachai Plasai, Chair of the Group Of 77 (G77) and China during the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) which took place at UN Headquarters in New York from 18 to 20 July.

During the forum, the 134 members of the G77 and China reaffirmed the importance of not only achieving the Sustainable Development Goals but also the driving principle of leaving no one behind.

“We must identify the “how” in reaching out to those furthest behind,” said Plasai who is also Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Thailand to the UN.

“To make this real, we cannot simply reaffirm all the principles recognised in the (2030) Agenda, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, but must earnestly implement them in all our endeavours,” Plasai added.

The UN’s 193 member states unanimously adopted the 2030 Development Agenda, including the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, in September 2015. The goals reflect the importance of the three aspects of sustainable development: economic, social and environmental, and countries will work towards achieving them by the year 2030.

However more still needs to be done to ensure that developing countries have access to the resources they need to meet the goals, said Plasai.

“We reiterate that enhancing support to developing countries is fundamental, including through provision of development financial resources, transfer of technology, enhanced international support and targeted capacity-building, and promoting a rules-based and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system,” he said.

“We urge the international community and relevant stakeholders to make real progress in these issues, including through the G20 Summit in China which will focus on developing action plans to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.”

At a separate meeting during the High Level Political Forum the G77 and China noted some of the specific gaps that remain in financing for development.

During that meeting the G77 and China expressed concern that rich countries are failing to meet their commitments to deliver Official Development Assistance (ODA) – the official term for aid – to developing countries.

“We note with concern that efforts and genuine will to address these issues are still lagging behind as reflected in this year’s outcome document of the Financing for Development forum which failed to address (gaps in ODA),” said Chulamanee Chartsuwan, Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative Of The Kingdom of Thailand to the UN, on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

Speaking during the forum on July 19, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon underscored the importance of the High Level Political Forum, “as the global central platform for follow-up and review of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Ban presented the results of the first Sustainable Development Goals report released by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs on July 20. The report used “data currently available to highlight the most significant gaps and challenges” in achieving the 2030 Agenda, said Ban.

“The latest data show that about one person in eight still lives in extreme poverty,” he said.

“Nearly 800 million people suffer from hunger.”

“The births of nearly a quarter of children under 5 have not been recorded.”

“1.1 billion people are living without electricity, and water scarcity affects more than 2 billion.”

Leaving No One Behind

Ban also noted that the importance of collecting data about the groups within countries that are more likely to be “left behind”, such as peoples with disabilities or indigenous peoples.

Collecting separate data about how these groups fare is considered one way for governments to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal 10 which aims to decrease inequality within countries.

However SDG 10 also aims to address inequalities between countries, an important objective for the G77, as the main organisation bringing together developing countries at the UN the G77 wants to make sure that countries in special circumstances are not left behind.

Countries in special circumstances include “in particular African countries, least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and Small Island Developing States, as well as countries in conflict and post-conflict situations,” said Chartsuwan.

However while the world’s poorest and most fragile countries have specific challenges, many middle income countries also have challenges too, the G77 statement noted.

Climate Change Agreement Needs Implementation

Developing countries, and particularly countries with special circumstances, are among those that are most adversely affected by climate change, and therefore wish to see speedy adoption and implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement alongside the 2030 Agenda.

Ban told the forum that he will host a special event during the UN General Assembly at 8am on September 21 for countries to deposit their instruments of ratification.

“We have 178 countries who have signed this Paris Agreement, and 19 countries have deposited their instrument of ratification.”

“As you are well aware, we need the 55 countries to ratify, and 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions accounted.”

“These 19 countries all accounted is less than 1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“So we need to do much more,” he said.

The G77 Newswire is published with the support of the G77 Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation (PGTF) in partnership with Inter Press Service (IPS).

Progress for Least Developed Countries could be a mixed blessing. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Aruna Dutt
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2016 (IPS)

The United Nations will undertake a major review of progress made in the world’s 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) later this month.

The beauty of the Paris agreement is that it’s a universal agreement, unlike the Kyoto protocol, said Ambassador Djoghlaf. Credit: Ahmed Djoghlaf.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 26 2016 (IPS)

The 134 members of the Group of 77 and China (G-77) made their mark on the Paris Climate Change Agreement and should now adopt a program of action to implement it, Ambassador Ahmed Djoghlaf told IPS in a recent interview.

Djoghlaf, of Algeria, was co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), together with Daniel Reifsnyder, of the United States, a position which allowed him to “witness very closely” the negotiation of the Paris Agreement.

“As the co-chair of the preparatory committee I can tell you that the G-77 has been a major actor during the  negotiation and a major player for the success of the Paris conference,” said Djoghlaf.

Djoghlaf said that the Group of 77 and China made its mark on the Paris agreement by mobilising a diverse range of countries and sub-groups, to “defend the collective interests of the developing countries.”

The group helped to find balance in the agreement “between mitigation issues that are important for developed countries and adaptation issues that are very close to the heart of the developing countries,” said Djoghlaf.

He also said that the group fought for equity, response measures, loss and damage as well as means of implementation, including financing, capacity building and transfer of technology.

“Those that are suffering the most nowadays are those that have less contributed to climate change crisis and they are using their own limited financial resources to address them, to adapt, to adjust to the consequences created by others,” he said.

Program of Action in Marrakech

“I hope that the G-77 through the leadership of Thailand will be able to take the lead and submit to its partners at the next conference of the parties in Marrakech a draft work program on capacity building for the implementation of the Paris agreement,” said Djoghlaf.

The 22nd meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP22) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be held in Marrakech, Morocco, from 7 to 18 Nov. 2016.

Djoghlaf said the program should address North-South as well as South-South capacity building, which is needed to ensure that developing countries can implement their commitments including on issues related to the finalisation of their nationally determined contributions and preparation of their future contributions.

“It would be important for the developing countries to be able to identify their own capacity building needs and let others do it for them. It will be also important to have a framework to coordinate the South-South cooperation on climate change similar to the Caracas Plan of Action on South-South Cooperation or the Buenos Aires Plan of Action on economic and technical cooperation among developing countries,” he said.

Quoting Victor Hugo Djoghlaf said that “not a single army in the world can stop an idea whose time has come, I do believe when it comes to South-South cooperation on climate change it’s an idea whose time has come also.”

“Within the G-77, the diverse group, you have emerging countries that are now leaders in renewable energy and the energy of tomorrow and the they have I think a responsibility to share their experience and to allow other countries from the same region and the same group to benefit from their experience,” he said.

“I also believe that time has come for the G-77 to initiate it’s own program of action on climate change,” he said.

Djoghlaf said that developing countries need capacity building to ensure that they can continue to participate fully in the implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.

Unlike developed countries, which “have fully-fledged ministries dealing with climate change,” he said, “In the South there is not a single country that has a Minister of Climate Change.”

He spoke about how during the negotiations of the Paris agreement many countries of the South had only one focal point and yet sometimes there were 15 meetings taking place at the same time and the meetings also often continued into the night.

It can be difficult for this focal point “to be able to understand and to participate, let alone be heard” when there is a “proliferation of simultaneous meetings,” he said.

Djoghlaf said that countries of the South could help address this disparity by establishing national committees, which include representatives from a number of different ministries.

“There’s not a single sector of activities which is not nowadays affected by the negative impact of climate change,” said Djoghlaf.

“All the sectors need to be engaged and we will succeed to win the battle of climate change when all these ministers, economic ministers and social ministers, will be fully integrating climate change in their planning and in their decision making processes,” he said.

Djoghlaf acknowledged it’s not easy for ministers in developing countries to engage because they have other urgent priorities. “They tend not to see the importance of the impact of climate change because they believe that this is not a priority for them,” he said. Yet there is often evidence that supports a more cross-cutting approach. For example, said Djoghlaf, World Health Organization research, which shows that 7 million people die from air pollution every year, demonstrates that climate change should also be a priority for health ministries.

The beauty of the Paris agreement

Djoghlaf said that the beauty of the Paris agreement is that it’s a universal agreement, unlike the Kyoto protocol. The Paris agreement is “very balanced” and should last for years to come because it takes into in to consideration the evolving capacities and the evolving responsibilities of countries, he said.

“We need a North-South and a South-South global climate solidarity,” said Djoghlaf.

“Without judging the past, who is responsible now, and who is responsible tomorrow, and who is responsible yesterday, I think we are all in the same boat, we are all in the same planet and we have to contribute based on our capacity,” he said.

He described the success of the signing ceremony held here Friday, where in total 175 countries signed and 15 countries deposited their instruments of ratification as “unprecedented”. “This has never happened before,” he said, referring to the developing countries, which also ratified the agreement. “It is a resounding political message and a demonstration of leadership,” he said. “It is crystal clear that the Paris agreement will enter into force well before the original expected date of 2020. The clock is ticking and we cannot afford any delay.”

Djoghlaf also said that he was not concerned about upcoming changes to the United States domestic political situation.

“When you are a party to the Paris agreement you can’t withdraw before three years after its entry into force. In addition I do believe that this historical agreement is in the long term interest of all Parties including the United States of America” he said.

“I believe that this Paris agreement is in the long term strategic interests of every country,” in part because eventually fossil fuel energy is going to disappear.

Investment in renewable energy was six times higher in 2015 than in 2014, he added.

“We tend to ignore the tremendous impact and signal the Paris agreement has already been providing to the business community,” he said.

Another part of the Paris agreement which Djoghlaf is happy about is what he describes as a “fully-fledged article on public awareness and education.”

“It’s to ensure that each and every citizen of the world, in particular the developing countries, are fully aware about the consequences of the climate change and the need for each of us as an individual to make our contribution to address the climate change,” he said.

“There is a need also to educate the people of the world of the need to have a sustainable lifestyle this throw away society can not continue to exist forever and we need to establish a sustainable pattern of production and consumption,” said Djoghlaf.

However Djoghlaf, who was the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said that he was concerned that the negotiations in 2015 didn’t adequately reflect the importance of ecosystems and biodiversity.

“Healthy biodiversity and healthy ecosystems have a major role to play to combat climate change,” said Djoghlaf, adding that 30 percent of carbon dioxide is absorbed by forests and 30 percent by oceans.

“For each breath that we have we owe it to the forests, but also to the ocean, also wetlands have a major contribution to make, the peat lands have a major contribution to make, the land itself, the fertile soil of course has a major contribution to play, so biodiversity is part and parcel of the climate global response,” he said.

By Martin Khor
GENEVA, Nov 16 2015 (IPS)

South-South cooperation is usually seen as a poor second fiddle to North-South aid in the world of development assistance. Indeed, developing countries’ policy makers themselves insist that South-South cooperation can only supplement but not replace North-South cooperation.

Martin Khor

The pledges, made by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to the United States in September , have given an immediate boost to the status of South-South cooperation in general, and to the rapidly growing global role of China.

President Xi first announced that China would set up a China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to provide 3.1 billion dollars to help developing countries tackle climate change.

Secondly, speaking at the United Nations, Xi said that China would set up another fund with initial spending of 2 billion dollars for South-South Cooperation and to aid developing countries to implement the post-2015 Development Agenda.

The sheer size of the pledges gives a big political weight to the Chinese contribution. Xi’s initiatives have the feel of a “game changer” in international relations.

It is significant that Xi used the framework of South-South cooperation as the basis of the two funds.

In the international system, there have been two types of development cooperation: North-South and South-South cooperation.

North-South cooperation has been based on the obligation of developed countries to assist developing countries because the former have much more resources and have also benefitted from their former colonies.

Indeed, developed countries have committed to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national income (GNI) as development assistance, a target that is regularly monitored and taken seriously but unfortunately is currently being met by only a handful of countries.

South-South cooperation on the other hand is based on solidarity and mutual benefit between developing countries as equals, and without obligations as there is no colonial history among them.

This is the position of the developing countries and their umbrella grouping, the G77 and China.

Xi himself described South-South cooperation as “a great pioneering measure uniting the developing nations together for self-improvement, is featured by equality, mutual trust, mutual benefit, win-win result, solidarity and mutual assistance and can help developing nations pave a new path for development and prosperity.”

In recent years, as Western countries reduced their commitment towards aid, they tried to blur the distinction and have been pressing big developing countries like China and India to also commit to provide development assistance just like they do, and preferably within the framework of the OECD, the rich countries’ club.

However, the developing countries have stuck to their political position: the developed countries have the responsibility to give adequate aid to poor countries and should not shift this on to other developing countries. The developing countries however will also help one another, through the arm of South-South cooperation.

This has increasingly led some developed countries to advocate, during negotiations at several UN meetings, that for them to continue with their aid commitment, some of the developing countries should also pay their share.

The traditional framework in international cooperation may now be changed by the two Chinese pledges, both interesting in themselves.

It is noted by many that the 3.1 billion dollar Chinese climate aid exceeds the 3 billion dollars that the US has pledged (but not yet delivered) to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) under the United Nations Climate Convention.

China has now taken that South-South route by announcing it will set up its own South-South climate fund, with the unexpectedly big size of 3.1 billion dollars, an amount larger than any developed country has pledged at the GCF.

With such a large amount, the Chinese climate fund has the potential to facilitate many significant programmes on climate mitigation, adaptation and institutional building.

As for the other fund announced by Xi, the initial 2 billion dollars is for South-South cooperation and for implementing the post-2015 development agenda just adopted by the United Nations. The agenda’s centrepiece is the sustainable development goals. Xi mentioned poverty reduction, agriculture, health and education as some of the areas the fund may cover.

This new fund has the potential of helping developing countries learn from one another’s development experiences and practices and make leaps in policy and action.

Xi also said an Academy of South-South Cooperation and Development will be established to facilitate studies and exchanges by developing countries on theories and practices of development suited to their respective national conditions.

The next steps to implement these pledges would be for China to set up the institutional basis for the funds, and design their framework, aims and functions. It is a great opportunity to show whether South-South cooperation can contribute as positively as North-South aid.

Of course, aid is not the only dimension of South-South cooperation, which is especially prominent in the areas of trade, investment, finance and the social sectors.

The regional trade agreements in ASEAN, East Asia, and the sub-regions of Africa and Latin America, as well as the trade and investment links between the three South continents, have shown immense expansion in recent decades.

Recently, the world’s imagination was also captured by the creation of the BRICS New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Chinese One Belt One Road programme, which all contain elements of South-South cooperation.

South-South cooperation in aid, however, is symbolically and practically of great importance, as it tends to assist the more vulnerable – including poor people and countries, and fragile environments including biodiversity and the climate undergoing crisis.

Let’s hope that the two new funds being set up by China will give a much-needed boost to South-South cooperation and solidarity among the people.

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Excerpt:

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Oct 7 2015 (IPS)

It has become clear that the South, including the least developed countries, has little reason to expect any real progress to the almost half century old commitment to transfer 0.7 percent of developed countries’ income to developing countries. But to add insult to injury, developing countries have, once again, been denied full participation in inter-governmental discussions to enhance overall as well as national tax capacities.

The ability to pursue development policies depends crucially on available fiscal space, which relies mostly on domestic revenues, especially taxes. However, tax revenues in most low- and lower middle-income developing countries are low. The average tax-GDP ratios in low-income and lower-middle income countries are around 15 and 19 per cent respectively, compared to the OECD average of around 34 per cent.

Although non-tax revenues may add significantly to total revenues in some countries, these ratios are typically low even in countries with considerable non-petroleum mineral resource extraction activity. Therefore, low- and lower-middle-income countries should take steps to increase their revenues after considering various options for doing so.
This is necessary because the main approach in recent decades has been to increase tax rates only if unavoidable. It was presumed that lower rates would ensure better compliance with tax laws, and thus raise revenue.

The prevailing tax wisdom also favoured broadening the tax base, even when taxation capacities are modest. Thus, indirect taxation has tended to increase while direct taxation of corporations and individuals has tended to decline. The latter was supposed to be good for investment and growth although the empirical support for this presumption is dubious.

In the vast majority of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the tax to GDP ratio has actually stagnated or declined, as international trade taxes accounted for the largest share of tax revenue. As tariffs and export duties declined with trade liberalization, the share of trade taxes has fallen.

Unfortunately, other taxes have not grown to compensate for the lower trade taxes. There is an urgent need to reverse this trend, with greater commitment to revenue generation in order to improve social protection, create employment and otherwise contribute to sustained economic recovery.

For many developing countries, total tax revenues were mainly from three sources: domestic taxes on goods and services (general sales tax, excises), foreign trade taxes (mostly import duties) and direct taxes (mostly from corporations, rather than individuals). Wealth and property taxes as well as social security contributions continue to make modest contributions.

For rich countries, however, income taxes (mostly from individuals) make the largest contribution (around 34 per cent), with consumption taxes at the around the same level, with social insurance contributions accounting for 26 per cent of total tax revenue and trade taxes quite insignificant.

With their different economic circumstances, it does not make sense for developing countries to simply emulate developed economies in trying to generate revenue. Even among developing countries, no one size fits all.

And certainly not for all time, as tax systems must evolve with changing economic circumstances. A key question is: which taxes are most likely to meet the requirements of effective collection, buoyancy and stability?

Globalization and Tax Evasion

Revenue losses due to globalization need to be addressed. There are three main reasons for revenue losses:

First, capital movements increase opportunities for tax evasion because of the limited capacity that any tax authority has to check the overseas incomes of its residents; evasion is easier as some governments and financial institutions systematically facilitate the concealment of relevant tax information from home tax authorities.

Where dividends, interest, royalties and management fees are not taxed in the country in which they are paid, they more easily escape notice in the countries where the beneficiaries live. There have been large non-resident aliens’ bank deposits in some countries like the US that impose no taxes on interest from such deposits.

Second, avoidance (not evasion) may increase, given international differences in tax rules and rates, because of the choice of tax regime that international-tax-treatment of enterprise income commonly offers. This is more likely for taxation of profits from corporations’ international operations. Transfer pricing for goods, services and resources – moving among branches or subsidiaries of a company – provides opportunities for shifting income to minimize tax liability.

Third, international competition for inward foreign direct investment may lead governments to reduce tax rates and increase concessions for foreign investors. Income tax rates have fallen sharply since the 1980s. The tax rates that governments can impose are thus constrained by international competition. They are reluctant to raise rates or to tax dividend and interest income for fear of capital flight. Yet, it has long been known that direct-tax concessions have little or no effect in diverting international investment, let alone in attracting such flows. Hence, such tax concessions constitute an unnecessary loss of revenue.

Beggar-thy-neighbour policies have led to revenue losses for many developing countries in a race-to-the-bottom also involving labour and environmental standards, which in turn erodes the prospects for balanced, inclusive and sustainable development.

Finance ministries and tax authorities in developing countries need to cooperate among themselves and with their developed economies counterparts in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to learn from one another and to close existing loopholes in their mutual interest. With the huge and growing size of public debts and the real and imagined fiscal constraints to sustained global economic recovery, inclusive international tax cooperation is more urgent than ever.
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Excerpt:

In the past two decades South Korea has made such vibrant progress that it now counts itself as one of the world’s leading economies. Credit: Anton Strogonoff/CC-BY-2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Back in 1996, when South Korea voluntarily quit the 132-member Group of 77 (G77) – described as the largest single coalition of developing nations — it joined the 34-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), long known as the “rich man’s club” based in Paris.

As one of only three countries to leave the G77 for the OECD – the other two being Mexico and Chile – Korea elevated itself from the ranks of developing nations to the privileged industrial world.

Perhaps more significantly, Korea also swapped places at the negotiation table: from an aid recipient to a donor nation.

“To play a greater role in the global community and fulfill its responsibility as one of the important donors, Korea will continue to increase its ODA [official development assistance]." -- Ambassador Choong-Hee Hahn, South Korea’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Since then, the Korean government has made a significant contribution to development aid, providing assistance to some 26 developing nations.

Ambassador Choong-Hee Hahn, South Korea’s deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, told IPS Korea has selected 26 priority partner countries – out of 130 partner countries – for development assistance.

The countries have been singled out based on their income level, political situation, diplomatic relations with Korea, and economic cooperation potential.

To enhance aid effectiveness, he pointed out, the Korean government provides 70 percent of its Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 26 countries, namely, Ghana, Nigeria, Nepal, East Timor, Laos, Rwanda, Mozambique, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, Bolivia, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Cameroon, Cambodia, Colombia, DRC, Paraguay, Pakistan, Peru, and the Philippines.

In 2014, Korea’s net ODA amounted to 1.85 billion dollars, ranking 16th in volume among OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members.

Korea’s ODA-Gross National Income (GNI) ratio reached 0.13 percent, ranking 23rd among the OECD DAC members.

“To play a greater role in the global community and fulfill its responsibility as one of the important donors, Korea will continue to increase its ODA,” the Korean envoy said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former foreign minister of South Korea, points out that the international community must make progress on the three pillars of United Nations engagement.

First:  sustainable development. Second: conflict prevention and resolution. And third:  advancing human rights and democracy.

“Korea has unique lessons to share on all three pillars and can be an active catalyst in bringing the world together on these issues,” the U.N. chief said.

He said Korea evolved from a developing to a developed country within the span of a single generation, and successfully hosted the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in 2010.

“The international community is looking to Korea with high expectations,” said Ban praising his home country “for rising from a beneficiary to a donor.”

As it continues to enhance its international profile, Korea is now home to the Global Green Growth Institute and also host to the new secretariat of the Green Climate Fund.

Over the last 20 to 30 years, Korea has made such vibrant economic progress that it is now one of the world’s, if not Asia’s, leading economies, with global brand names such as Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, LG and Daewoo.

Asked about the secret of his country’s economic success, Ambassador Hahn told IPS Korea went through an unprecedented transformation from one of the least developed countries to a member of the OECD within a generation. Such economic success can be explained by several key factors.

First, Korea set ambitious yet realistic goals based on sustainable economic development plans.

He said this was achieved through the implementation of five-year economic development plans in the initial stage, even as Korea has made steady progress from the light industry to heavy industry, then to the service industry.

Second, human capital secured through quality education has been another major factor.

In sync with economic development, he pointed out, mandatory primary and secondary education was phased in.

“The strong will of the Korean people to educate also led to the establishment of high quality higher education infrastructure.”

Third, traits such as diligence, self-help, and cooperation contributed to the improvement in the ownership of the country’s development.

Especially, the concept of ‘Saemaul Undong’, which decisively contributed to poverty eradication and development of rural areas in the 1970s, created systematic cooperation between the central and local governments and motivated local governments and communities to foster leadership and ownership of poverty eradication.

These elements, he said, can be seen as the key characteristics of the Korean rural development model, which continues to be a good role model for developing countries today.

Lastly, securing efficiency and accountability through the establishment of democratic and efficient governance led to successful poverty eradication and democratization.

“I believe inclusive institutions, rule of law, and a healthy civil society played a significant role in progressing towards a democratic and open society that is respectful of justice and human rights, considerate of the vulnerable, and that emphasizes human dignity.”

Asked if North and South Korea will one day join into a single union – as East and West Germany did decades ago – Ambassador Hahn said this year marks the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea.

Just as South Korean President Park Geun-hye repeatedly called for bringing down the barriers dividing the Korean peninsula, “it is our sincere hope that conditions for a peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula are created in the near future, and that the Korean peninsula becomes a foothold to realize a ‘world free from nuclear weapons’,” he stated.

“Based on the Trust-building Process on the Korean Peninsula, we currently make efforts to lay the ground for unification by further developing inter-Korea relations, building confidence and easing tensions in the Korean peninsula,” he declared.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Soren Ambrose
NEW YORK, Jul 27 2015 (IPS)

The final round of negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals – the successor to the Millennium Development Goals, due to be inaugurated in September at the U.N. General Assembly – is now underway in New York.

Courtesy of Soren Ambrose/ActionAid

The United Nations and many member governments want to conclude the debates by the end of July, so that there will not be open debate during the SDG Summit. But reports indicate that the atmosphere in the room is one of seething distrust.

That’s because of what happened during the Financing for Development (FfD) conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last month.

The developing countries – those grouped together in the “G77,” which 50 years after its founding actually has 134 members – were pushing a proposal for a universal intergovernmental organisation, within the U.N., which would have as its mandate reform and maintenance of the international tax system.

While this proposal would not have immediately remedied any of the myriad ways that corporations dodge taxes in developing countries, it would be a decisive change to the system that has allowed such activities to flourish.

To the extent that there are international rules, or standards and guidelines, on taxation now, they are proposed and elaborated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), a club of 34 of the world’s richest countries. Every once in a while they make a show of consulting those other 134 countries, but those others never actually get a vote.Ultimately it’s the pressure of the people which will force their governments to be responsible. The movement to stand up to those who have hijacked our power is building.

In the new proposed way of making decisions on international tax rules, every country would have an equal voice and equal vote. This fight matters is because developing countries are confronting the need to change how the rules are made, and who makes the rules.

Until they manage that, they will always, at best, be running to stay in place. Changing who makes the rules is a necessary, although not sufficient condition, for creating permanent change.

Taxation is vital because wealthy companies and individuals get and stay rich by using a portion of their considerable resources to hire lawyers and accountants to guide them in dodging the taxes they should be paying in the countries where they excavate, grow, or purchase their raw materials, assemble their products, and make an increasing proportion of their sales.

If they don’t have such staff in-house, they can hire the services of big accounting firms for whom this is the most lucrative activity.

Most big companies manipulate “tax treaties” between countries and tax havens like Switzerland, Mauritius, and the Cayman Islands to create legal fictions that exempt them from paying most of the taxes they owe.

What they do is usually not technically illegal, because of the impossibility of keeping up with the tactics of the armies of experts dedicated to avoiding taxes. But neither is it quite ethical.

This deprives countries of the revenue – to the tune of at least 100 billion dollars every year – that they need to fund development, and ensures the perpetuation of the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few. That wealth translates to power – a veritable global plutocracy.

The OECD, to be fair, has made some moves to clamp down on the most egregious forms of tax avoidance, including their “base erosion and profit shifting” (BEPS) process begun in 2013.

The corporate lawyers and accountants were a little nervous about BEPS, but with the process winding up, it appears that any reforms it demands will not be manageable. The promises at the outset of the process to include developing countries never amounted to much.

The FfD process in the U.N. was, of course, universal. The U.N. and national governments usually like to have the “outcome document” finalised before a summit meeting. The prospect of a messy negotiation with thousands of advocates just outside the door makes them nervous.

But after months of negotiations in New York and a series of missed deadlines, the big debate over the tax body was not resolved. The ministers would go to Addis facing open negotiations.

Bolstered by the support of hundreds of civil society groups, the G77 governments – a group that has to accommodate the interests of very disparate countries – held together. Three BRICS countries – South Africa as the chair of the G77, along with India and Brazil – were vocal actors on the side of the developing countries, something they can’t always be relied on to do as they ascend the global power ladder.

With negotiators starting to meet before the formal start of the meetings on July 13, there were several days filled with ever-shifting rumours. But on the evening of July 15, the eve of the scheduled end of the conference, the announcement came: there would be an outcome document little changed from the unsatisfactory draft they brought from New York.

Promises were made to expand the resources and prestige of the existing U.N. Committee of Tax Experts, but nothing more. No universal membership, and no mandate for reform.

The G77 held out to the end. But the rich countries, led by the United States with the steady support of the European Union, Canada, Japan, and Australia, refused to give up the regime of loopholes and havens and double-dealing that adds up to billions in lost revenue every year.

Make no mistake, ordinary people in rich countries also lose out as corporations dodge taxes. But with their territories serving as the leading facilitators of tax avoidance in the world, their governments showed they want the present system to endure.

The current global hyper-capitalism now puts no constraints on capital. Unlimited profits, unlimited wealth, and unlimited power have been accruing to the finance industry and the wealthy corporations and individuals it serves for over 40 years.

The rich countries’ politicians not only put up with it, they tout the “private sector” as the panacea for development in poor countries, with nearly no evidence to support them.

And at home, they cut public services and impose austerity, explaining that government just can’t afford to serve the people. Their priority has been corporations’ and investors’ bottomless appetite for profit and power.

As my colleague Ben Phillips has written about the FfD, it’s actually good news that the rich countries had to put an ugly stop to the negotiations, with barely a face-saving compromise to point to. Usually they manage to find a way to assign the blame to someone else.

Forcing them to show their hand is valuable; it’s clear that those making the rules are far more identified with a powerful few than with the public they claim to serve.

The next step is at the SDG Summit at the end of September, at the time of the annual U.N. General Assembly meetings. There we will learn whether and to what extent the developing countries will stand up to those who have monopolised power for so long. If they do, we may be on the road to reversing parts of the system that perpetuates the status quo.

Whatever happens, we aren’t going anywhere. Civil Society won’t change this global dynamic by attending these conferences, or through polite lobbying. We will have to endure many more meetings, and more setbacks.

But ultimately it’s the pressure of the people which will force their governments to be responsible. The movement to stand up to those who have hijacked our power is building.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Bhumika Muchhala of Third World Network. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

By Bhumika Muchhala
NEW YORK, Jul 10 2015 (IPS)

The key priorities of the Group of 77 developing countries (G77) remain somewhat aligned around a set of issues that have been present from the beginning of the FfD negotiations in New York.

This set of issues includes a re-commitment to Official Development Assistance (ODA) by developed countries, including the provision that climate finance and biodiversity financing is new and additional to traditional official development assistance (ODA). This language, regrettably, is not present in the current July 7 draft outcome document.In the context of vested geo-political interests and the wide gap between North and South, a strengthened ethos of multilateralism is at its most critical imperative next week in Addis Ababa.

In the final plenary, the tone of the G77 was to remain within the main areas of debate while leaving the majority of the text, whose language has been arrived and agreed upon through arduous negotiations, closed to further negotiation in Addis Ababa. In other words, the entire text should, preferably, not be re-opened to negotiation.

However, the U.S. and Japan were far more aggressive, with Japan stating that it is important to emphasise that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and the U.S. making note of “a list” of problem issues, essentially warning Member States that some of the text could be at risk if consensus was not achieved.

The European Union noted that they were not in agreement with the formulation of South-South cooperation and fossil fuel subsidies, in that these sections are “too weak.” The long-standing position of the EU is that more obligations and commitments should be taken on through South-South cooperation and that fossil fuel subsidies should be rationalised with more determination.

Across all U.N. discussions, the issue of South-South cooperation is a centrifugal point. Developing countries routinely clarify that South-South cooperation is a complement, not a substitute, to North-South cooperation and that international development financing commitments are to be met by developed countries taking the lead in the framework of the global partnership for development.

Paragraph 56 in the July 7 text mentions South-South cooperation as having increased importance and different history and particularities, and stresses that “South-South cooperation should be seen as an expression of solidarity among peoples and countries of the South, based on their shared experiences and objectives.

It should continue to be guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty, national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interference in domestic affairs and mutual benefit.”

Paragraph 57 welcomes the increased contributions of South-South cooperation to poverty eradication and sustainable development and encourages developing countries to voluntarily step up their efforts to strengthen South-South cooperation, and to further improve its development effectiveness in accordance with the provisions of the Nairobi Outcome document of the High Level U.N. Conference on South-South Cooperation.

The U.S. referred to a “list” of issues that, in their view, have not been agreed upon, and which they did not clarify. This list is a potential source of stalemate in Addis Ababa. It could become the foundation for contentious trade-offs and further dilution of an already extremely diluted outcome document.

The danger here is the reopening of hard-won text where there is already some degree of intergovernmental agreement. If developed countries reserve their option to ask for further movement in their favour, across the spectrum of issues ranging from public and private finance, debt and systemic issues, the opening paragraphs and systemic issues, a united G77 defence of FfD for developing countries would be critical.

In the context of vested geo-political interests and the wide gap between North and South, a strengthened ethos of multilateralism is at its most critical imperative next week in Addis Ababa. There is still ample space and prospect for Member States to push for the best possible compromise and outcome in Addis Ababa.

A genuine global partnership for development requires efforts where negotiations are conducted in good faith, without backhanded tactics to manipulate text, and without resorting to undemocratic measures to influence the text.

The very integrity of FfD as an international conference is that it addresses, with the most universal membership available in global governance fora to date, systemic issues in the international architecture for development finance, private finance, capital flows, debt, trade and now this year, technology as well.

The significance of FfD is that it can decide on intergovernmental commitments to deliver concrete and actionable commitments on development finance, as well as generate political momentum for much-needed reforms in the international systemic and structural architecture.

For example, it has the potential to push for reforms on financial regulation, debt sustainability, trade and the international monetary system. The history of political and social change involves a vital role for the international norm setting that can take place through the FfD conference.

As the draft civil society declaration for Addis Ababa states, the level of ambition witnessed in this year’s FfD negotiations is hardly suited to function as the operational MOI for the post-2015 development agenda, which is one of the goals, though not the only one, of this conference.

Even more unfortunately, there is now a serious risk of retrogression from the agreements in the Monterrey Consensus of 2002 and the Doha Declaration of 2008. The countries that historically, and with good reason, have taken on a large part of the responsibility to lead in delivering MOI, have gone to great lengths to shed this responsibility or shift them to others.

The FfD text as of the current draft of July 7 fails to ensure the space to undertake normative and systemic reforms that would enable developing countries to mobilise their own available resources. This combination makes it impossible for countries to generate the requisite resources to deliver a sustainable agenda.

Civil society has expressed its disappointment that save for an explicit decision in Paragraph 123 to establish a Technology Facilitation Mechanism at the U.N. post-2015 Development Summit in order to support the SDGs, the FfD draft outcome document is almost entirely devoid of actionable deliverables.

While not a pledging conference it is deplorable that a conference on financing fails to scale up existing sources and commit new financial resources. This calls into question governments’ commitment to realize a development agenda as expansive and multi-dimensional as the SDGs.

In particular, civil society notes the rejection of a U.N. tax body which would create significant sustainable financing for development through, for example, combating corporate tax dodging in developing countries.

A very low window of opportunity was expected if the FfD outcome document was closed in New York. On this note, it is a positive development that concrete negotiations will carry forth into Addis Ababa next week.

While inevitable friction will ensue across well-established battle-lines, the 3rd FfD conference still has a breath of hope for a better outcome.

Part One can be found here.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted the Climate Summit 2014 at UN headquarters in New York on Sep. 23. Credit: Green Climate Fund

By Oscar Reyes
WASHINGTON, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics: Talk down expectations to the point that you can meet them.
And it played out again in Berlin as 21 countries—including the United States—pledged nearly 9.5 billion dollars to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. body tasked with helping developing countries cope with climate change and transition to clean energy systems.Despite its green mandate, the Green Climate Fund may also support an array of “dirty energy” projects—including power generation from fossil fuels, nuclear power, and destructive mega-dam projects.

The total—which will cover a four-year period before new pledges are made—included three billion dollars from the United States, 1.5 dollars billion from Japan, and around one billion dollars each from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

That’s a big step in the right direction. But put into context, 9.5 billion dollars quickly sounds less impressive.

Floods, droughts, sea level rises, heat waves, and other forms of extreme weather are likely to cost developing countries hundreds of billions of dollars every year. And it will take hundreds of billions more to ensure that they industrialise more cleanly than their counterparts did in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

Developed countries should foot a large part of that bill, since they bear the greatest responsibility for causing climate change.

The politics of responsibility

Determining who pays for what is an integral part of achieving an international climate deal. And so far, pledges from rich countries have tracked far behind previous requests and recommendations.

Back in 2009, developed countries signed the Copenhagen Accord, which committed them to move 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 to developing countries. A year later, the U.N. climate conference in Cancún called for the Green Climate Fund to be set up to channel a “significant share” of the money developing countries need to adapt to climate change.

Earlier this year, the G77—which is actually a grouping of 133 developing countries—called for 15 dollars billion to be put into the Green Climate Fund. U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres set the bar lower at 10 billion dollars. The failure to even reach that figure is likely to put strain on negotiations for a new multilateral climate agreement that is expected to be reached in December 2015.

But it’s not just the headline figure that’s important. Plenty of devils are likely to be lurking in the details.

Delivering on the U.S. pledge requires budgetary approval from a hostile Congress, although a payment schedule stretching over much of the next decade could make that more politically feasible than it initially sounds.

More concerning are the conditions attached to the U.S. pledge, which include a threat that some of the money could be redirected to other funds—likely those run by the World Bank—if “the pace of progress” at the Green Climate Fund is inadequate. Given that the United States is advocating rules on how the fund makes decisions that would tip the balance of power in favor of contributor countries, the threat is far from innocuous.

France will provide a significant proportion of its share as loans rather than grants, while the small print of the UK contribution is likely to reveal that part of its money comes as a “capital contribution,” which can only be paid out as loans.

Those restrictions could limit the scope of activities that the fund can finance, since much of the vital support and infrastructure needed to support community resilience in the face of climate change is too unprofitable to support loan repayments.

Future of the fund

Looming over these issues is the larger, unresolved question of what the fund will actually finance. Some donor countries—including the United States—are pushing for a fund that would support transnational corporations and their supply chains, helping them turn profits from investments in developing countries.

Despite its green mandate, the Green Climate Fund may also support an array of “dirty energy” projects—including power generation from fossil fuels, nuclear power, and destructive mega-dam projects. That’s the subject of an ongoing dispute on the fund’s 24-member board and a persistent complaint from a range of civil society organisations.

That battle is not yet lost.

Despite its shortcomings, the Green Climate Fund has great potential to support a global transition to renewable energy, sustainable public transport systems, and energy efficiency. And with its goal of spending 50 percent of its funds on “adaptation” activities, it could also serve as a vital lifeline for communities already facing the impacts of climate change.

An important milestone was passed with the billions pledged to the Green Climate Fund. But achieving a cleaner, more resilient world will take billions more—along with a commitment to invest the money in projects that mitigate climate change rather than cause it.

This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. 

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

By Mourad Ahmia
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2014 (IPS)

When the Group of 77 commemorated its 50th anniversary recently, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency was not far behind.

Established in 1964 as the largest news agency of the global South, IPS has been the voice of both developing nations and the Group of 77 for the past 50 years.

Mourad Ahmia. Courtesy of the G-77

Both are linked together by a single political commitment: to protect and represent the interests of the developing world.

The 50th anniversary celebration of the G-77 and IPS represents an opportunity to enhance and strengthen the joint partnership in projecting and promoting the concerns of the countries of the South.

For five decades the agency has, in its own way, provided technical help to delegations of the South in promoting the global development agenda of the South.

The integral role played by the Group of 77 in economic diplomacy and projecting the development interests of the global South is a testimony to its continued relevance in the ongoing global development dialogue.

IPS’s priceless contribution in that endeavor translates into promoting a new platform for global governance through critical information and communication.

IPS supported the publication for many years of the first ever G-77 newsletter: “The Journal of the Group of 77,” as well as publishing special editions of Terra Viva on various occasions, particularly the celebration of anniversaries of the Group of 77 and the South Summits.

The initiative to establish a global network of news agencies of the South, launched in 2006 by the G-77 and IPS under the chairmanship of South Africa, is still a work in progress.

Meanwhile, the G-77 has its own 50-year history of accomplishments.

When it was established on Jun. 15, 1964, the signing nations of the well-known “Joint Declaration of Seventy-Seven Countries” formed the largest intergovernmental organisation of developing countries in the United Nations to articulate and promote their collective interests and common development agenda.

Since the First Ministerial meeting of the G-77 held in Algeria in October 1967, and the adoption of the “Charter of Algiers”, the Group of 77 laid down the institutional mechanisms and structures that have contributed to shaping the international development agenda and changing the landscape of the global South for the past five decades.

Over the years, the Group has gained an increasing role in the determination and conduct of international relations through global negotiations on major North-South and development issues.The G-77 adheres to the principle that nations, big and small, deserve an equal voice in world affairs... Today the Group remains linked by common geography and shared history of struggle for liberation, freedom and South-South solidarity.

The Group has a presence worldwide at U.N. centres in New York, Geneva, Nairobi, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Washington D.C., and is actively involved in ongoing negotiations on a wide range of global issues including climate change, poverty eradication, migration, trade, and the law of the sea.

Today, the G-77 remains the only viable and operational mechanism in multilateral economic diplomacy within the U.N system. The growing membership is proof of its enduring strength.

From 77 founding member states in 1964 to 134 and counting in 2014, it is the largest intergovernmental organisation of the global South dealing with the Development Agenda.

The Group was created with the objective to collectively boost the role and influence of developing countries on the global stage when it became clear that political independence, to be meaningful, required changes in the economic relations between North and South.

Thus, political independence needed to be accompanied by economic diplomacy with the ultimate objective of the reform of the international economic order.

Today, the G-77 represents the greatest coalition of humanity and remains a vital negotiating instrument in economic multilateral diplomacy, and for ensuring international peace and justice through international cooperation for development within the framework of the United Nations.

This has been the thrust of the joint expression of South-South solidarity since the Group’s creation, and its collective voice has spread to every institution and international organisation representing the hopes and aspirations of the majority of humanity.

The integral role played by the G-77 in economic diplomacy and projecting the development interests of the global South is a testimony to its continued relevance in the global development dialogue.

The Group has, through its compact Executive Secretariat limited resources, managed to work successfully with its development partners to analyse issues and propose alternative solutions to development challenges.

For 50 years the G-77 contributed to the formulation and adoption of numerous U.N. resolutions, programmes, and plans of action, most of which address the core issues of development. Its role in generating global consensus on the issues of development has been widely acknowledged by world leaders, diplomats, parliamentarians, academia, researchers, media and civil society.

It is a tribute to the historical validity of the conception, purposes, and endeavours of the Group, which have withstood the test of time.

The essential rationale for the Group was, and remains, to strive for a wider participation of developing countries in global economic decision-making and for inserting a development dimension in international institutions and policies within the framework of the United Nations system.

The Group presently consists of 134 countries, comprising over 80 per cent of the world’s population and approximately two-thirds of the United Nations membership.

The Group is the world’s second largest international organisation after the 193-member United Nations, and many countries, from emerging developing economies to least developed countries and small island developing states have chaired the Group, ranging in regions from Africa, Asia-Pacific to Latin America and the Caribbean.

2014 marks a milestone in the life of the Group with the celebration of the fiftieth year of its establishment, a period during which it has nearly doubled in membership and multiplied its south-south cooperation achievements while continuing to operate as a coalition of nations in promoting North-South dialogue for development.

It is remarkable that with such a diverse membership and without a formal constitution it has managed to endure the world’s political and economic turbulence for 50 years and remain true to its original mission in promoting the United Nations’ development agenda.

The G-77 has devoted five decades working to achieve development. It adheres to the principle that nations, big and small, deserve an equal voice in world affairs.

Today the Group remains linked by common geography and shared history of struggle for liberation, freedom and South-South solidarity.

In its 50 years, the Group of 77 has solidified the global South as a coalition of nations, aspiring for a global partnership for peace and development.

Today, the Group of 77 is recognised for its work to promote international cooperation for development towards a prosperous and peaceful world.

The commitment and dedication of the Group in selflessly shaping world affairs has benefited billions of lives worldwide, and such recognition of its significant contribution during the Group’s fiftieth anniversary is most appropriate.

Happy 50th anniversary for both G-77 and IPS!

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

IPS's then Director-General Roberto Savio honours the director-general of the International Labour Organisation, Juan Somavía of Chile, Oct. 29, 1999. Credit: UN Photo/Susan Markisz

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Aug 22 2014 (IPS)

In 1979, I had a debate at the United Nations with the late Stan Swinton, then the very powerful and brilliant director of Associated Press (AP). At one point, I furnished the following figures (which had been slow to change), as an example of Western bias in the media:

In 1964, four transnational news agencies – AP, United Press International (UPI), Agence France Presse (AFP) and Reuters – handled 92 percent of world information flow. The other agencies from industrialised countries, including the Soviet news agency TASS, handled a further 7 percent. That left the rest of the world with a mere 1 percent.In a world where we need to create new alliances, the commitment of IPS is to continue its work for better information, at the service of peace and cooperation.

Why, I asked, was the entire world obliged to receive information from the likes of AP in which the United States was always the main actor? Swinton’s reply was brief and to the point: “Roberto, the U.S. media account for 99 percent of our revenues. Do you think they are more interested in our secretary of state, or in an African minister?”

This structural reality is what lay behind the creation of Inter Press Service (IPS) in 1964, the same year in which the Group of 77 (G77) coalition of developing countries saw the light. I found it unacceptable that information was not really democratic and that – for whatever reason, political or economic – it was leaving out two-thirds of humankind.

We set up an international, non-profit cooperative of journalists, in which – by statute – every working journalist had one share and in which those like me from the North could not account for more than 20 percent of the membership.

As importantly, we stipulated that nobody from the North could report from the South. We set ourselves the challenge of providing journalists from developing countries with the opportunity to refute Northern claims that professional quality was inferior in the South.

Two other significant factors differentiated IPS from the transnational news agencies.

First, IPS was created to cover international affairs, unlike AP, UPI, AFP and Reuters, where international coverage was in addition to the main task of covering national events.

Second, IPS was dedicated to the long-term process and not just to events. By doing this, we would be giving a voice to those who were absent in the traditional flow of information – not only the countries  of the South, but also neglected actors such as women, indigenous peoples and the grassroots, as well as issues such as human rights, environment, multiculturalism,  international social justice and the search for global governance…

Of course, all this was not easily understood or accepted.

We decided to support the creation of national news agencies and radio and TV stations in the countries of the South because we saw these as steps towards the pluralism of information. In fact, we helped to set up 22 of these national news agencies.

That created distrust on both sides of the fence. Many ministers of information in the South looked on us with suspicion because, while we were engaging in a useful and legitimate battle, we refused to accept any form of state control. In the North, the traditional and private media looked on us as a “spokesperson” for the Third World.

In 1973, the Press Agencies Pool of the Non-Aligned Movement agreed to use IPS, which was growing everywhere, as its international carrier. At the same time, in the United Nations, the call was ringing for the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and was approved by the General Assembly with the full support of the Security Council.

It looked like global governance was on its way, based on the ideas of international economic justice, participation and development as the cornerstone values for the world economic order.

In 1981 all this came to an end. Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom decided to destroy multilateralism and, with it, the very concept of social justice.

One of the first actions taken was to ask all countries working with IPS to cut any relation with us, and dismantle their national systems of information. Within a few years, the large majority of national news agencies, and radio and TV stations disappeared.  From now on, information was to be a market, not a policy.

The United States and the United Kingdom (along with Singapore) withdrew from the U.N. Scientific, Cultural and Educational Organisation (UNESCO) over moves to establish a New International Information Order (NIIO) as a corollary to NIEO, and the policy of establishing national systems of information disappeared. The world changed direction, and the United Nations has never recovered from that change.

IPS was not funded by countries, it was an independent organisation, and even if we lost all our clients from the world of national systems of information, we had many private media as clients. So we survived, but we decided to look for new alliances, with those who were continuing the quest for world governance based on participation and justice, with people interested in global issues, like human rights, the environment and so on.

It is worth noting that the United Nations was moving along a parallel path. In the 1990s, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the sixth U.N. secretary-general, launched a series of world conferences on global issues, with the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) – also widely known as the ‘Earth Summit’ – the first in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

For the first time, not only we of IPS – a non-governmental organisation (NGO) recognised by the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – but any NGO interested in and concerned with environmental issues could attend.

Actually, we really had two conferences, albeit separated by 36 kilometres: one, the inter-governmental conference with 15,000 participants, and the other the NGO Forum, the civil society conference with over 20,000 participants. And it was clear that the civil society forum was pushing for the success of the Earth Summit much more than many delegates!

To create a communication space for the two different gatherings, IPS conceived and produced a daily newspaper – TerraViva – to be distributed widely in order to create a sense of communality. We continued to do so at the other U.N.-organised global conferences in the 1990s (on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, on Population in Cairo in 1994, on Women in Beijing in 1995, and the Social Summit in Copenhagen, also in 1995).

We then decided to maintain it as a daily publication, to be distributed throughout the United Nation system: this is the TerraViva that reaches you daily, and is the link between IPS and members of the U.N. family.

Against this backdrop, it is sad to note that the world suddenly took a turn for the worse with the end of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s, when an endless number of unresolved fault lines that had been frozen during the period of East-West hostility came to light.

This year, for example, the number of persons displaced by conflict has reached the same figures as at the end of the Second World War.

Social injustice, not only at national but also at the international level, is growing at an unprecedented speed. The 50 richest men (no women) in the world accrued their wealth in 2013 by the equivalent of the national budgets of Brazil and Canada.

According to Oxfam, at the present pace, by the year 2030 the United Kingdom will have the same level of social inequality as during the reign of Queen Victoria, a period in which an unknown philosopher by the name of Karl Marx was working in the library of the British Museum on his studies of the exploitation of children in the new industrial revolution.

Fifty years after the creation of IPS, I believe more than ever that the world is unsustainable without some kind of global governance. History has shown us that this cannot come from military superiority … and events are now becoming history fast.

During my life I have seen a country of 600 million people in 1956, trying to make iron from scraps in schools, factories and hospitals, turn into a country of 1.2 billion today and well on the road towards becoming the world’s most industrialised country.

The world had 3.5 billion people in 1964, and now has over 7.0 billion, and will be over 9.0 billion in 20 years’ time.

In 1954, sub-Saharan Africa had 275 million inhabitants and now has around 800 million, soon to become one billion in the next decade, well more than the combined population of the United States and Europe.

To repeat what Reagan and Thatcher did in 1981 is therefore impossible – and, anyhow, the real problem for everybody is that there is no progress on any central issue, from the environment to nuclear disarmament.

Finance has taken a life of its own, different from that of economic production and beyond the reach of governments. The two engines of globalisation, finance and trade, are not part of U.N. discourse. Development means to ‘be more’, while globalisation has come to mean to ‘have more’ – two very different paradigms.

In just 50 years, the world of information has changed also beyond imagination. The internet has given voice to social media and the traditional media are in decline. We have gone, for the first time in history, from a world of information to a world of communication. International relations now go well beyond the inter-governmental relations, and the ‘net’ has created new demands for accountability and transparency, the bases for democracy.

And, unlike 50 years ago, there is a growing divide between citizens and public institutions. The issue of corruption, which 50 years ago was a hushed-up affair, is now one of the issues that begs for a renewal of politics. And all this, like it or not, is basically an issue of values.

IPS was created on a platform of values, to make information more democratic and participatory, and to give the voice to those who did not have one. Over the last 50 years, through their work and support, hundreds and hundreds of people have shared the hope of contributing to a better world. A wide-ranging tapestry of their commitment is offered in The Journalists Who Turned the World Upside Down, a book written by over 100 personalities and practising journalists.

It is evident that those values continue to be very current today, and that information continues to be an irreplaceable tool for creating awareness and democracy, even if it is becoming more and more a commodity, event-oriented and market-oriented.

But, in my view, there is no doubt that all the data show us clearly that we must find some global governance, based on participation, social justice and international law, or else we will enter a new period of dramatic confrontation and social unrest.

In a world where we need to create new alliances, the commitment of IPS is to continue its work for better information, at the service of peace and cooperation … and to support those who share the same dream.

Roberto Savio is founder of IPS and President Emeritus.

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Young Bangladeshi women raise their fists at a protest in Shahbagh. Credit: Kajal Hazra/IPS

By Lakshmi Puri
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2014 (IPS)

At the end of this week leaders of the Group of 77 and China will meet in Bolivia to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the group.

From the original 77, this group now brings together 133 countries, making it the largest coalition of governments on the international stage. Promoting an agenda of equity among nations and among people, sustainable and inclusive development and global solidarity have been at the heart of the G77’s priorities since its inception. But none of it will be achieved without fully embracing the agenda of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Two weeks ago, I travelled to Bolivia to attend a historic international meeting in preparation for the G77 Summit, exclusively dedicated to women and gender equality. More than 1,500 women, many of them indigenous, packed the room, full of energy. Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, was also present – a testimony to his commitment and leadership to this critical agenda.

At this meeting, a message emerged, loud and clear. If we want the 21^st century to see the end of discrimination, inequality and injustice, we must focus on women and girls – half the world’s population, which continues to experience discrimination every day and everywhere. The 20^th century saw the end of colonisation. Now the 21^st century must see the end of discrimination against women.  From decolonisation, we must move to depatriarchilisation.

Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of UN Women, speaks at a press conference on the International Day to End Violence Against Women. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

This meeting took place at a critical time and in a significant place. Latin America has lived through its own struggles against discrimination and oppression. In a continent that used to be marked by striking inequalities and violent dictatorships, a vibrant movement has emerged to put the region on the path of social justice, democracy, and equality. In Bolivia there is a constitutional law against violence against women and a law against political violence, making it a pioneer in the region and beyond.

This hope for a brighter and more just future must now spread to the world as a whole, and the G77 can play a defining role. The elaboration of the Post-2015 development agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is coming to a critical point. The Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals is about to complete its work and member states will finalise the new development agenda in the course of next year.

This coincides with the 20-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the landmark international framework to achieve gender equality and women’s rights. Beijing+20 provides us with an opportunity to drive accelerated and effective implementation of the gender equality and women’s rights agenda and to ensure that it is central to the new development framework.

We need to take full advantage of these processes and their interconnections to ensure that gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment feature prominently in the new development agenda and to accelerate implementation.

We have a historic opportunity and a collective responsibility to make the rights and well-being of women and girls a political priority; both globally and within every country. To this end, the new framework must adopt a comprehensive, rights-based and transformative approach that addresses structural inequality and gender-based discrimination.

This comprehensive approach must include targets to eliminate discrimination against women in laws and policies; end violence against women; ensure the realisation of sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and adolescent girls throughout their life cycles; and the recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work.

Now is the time to put the full political weight behind passage of long-pending legislation to eliminate discrimination against women and promote gender equality.

Now is the time to allocate the resources to fund services for victims and survivors of violence against women.

Now is the time to strengthen national data collection and undertake a time use survey to better understand unpaid care work or a survey on violence against women.

Now is the time to make public spaces safe for women and girls.

Now is the time to improve rural infrastructure to strengthen women’s access to markets and help tackle rural feminised poverty.

Now is the time to showcase champions of gender equality, to recognise role models that have overcome stereotypes and helped level the playing field for girls and women in all areas, in politics and business, in academia and in public service, in the home and the community.

Mahatma Gandhi rightly said that true freedom from colonialism will not be achieved unless each and every citizen is free, equal and is able to realise his or her potential. The 21^st century must see the end of the centuries’ old practice of patriarchy and gender discrimination, and unshackle women and girls so they can fully enjoy their human rights.

When the G77 meets later this week at its 50^th anniversary commemorative Summit, I have high hopes that they will make this defining agenda of gender equality and women’s empowerment a centerpiece of their global development and freedom project for the next 50 years.

(END)

*Lakshmi Puri is the deputy executive director of U.N. Women, based in New York.

The 132-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing nations, has urged Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to provide, “as soon as possible…alternative options for banking services” in New York City following the mass cancellation of bank accounts of U.N. missions and foreign diplomats.

The draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, is an “agreed text” which has the blessings of all 132 countries, plus China.

Responding to a demand by member states for reciprocal retaliation, the G77 requests the secretary-general to review the “U.N. Secretariat’s financial relations with the JP Morgan Chase Bank and consider alternatives to such financial institutions and to report thereon, along with the information requested.”

Chase bank handles billions of dollars in the accounts maintained by the United Nations and its agencies in New York City. Credit: UN Photo/Milton Grant

Currently, the bank handles billions of dollars in the accounts maintained by the United Nations and its agencies in New York City.

The Group expresses “deep concern” over the decisions made by several banking institutions, including JP Morgan Chase, in closing bank accounts of mostly developing countries, and diplomats accredited to the United Nations and their relatives.

The resolution, which is subject to amendments, cites the 1947 U.S.- U.N. headquarters agreement that “guarantees the rights, obligations and the fulfillment of responsibilities by member states towards the United Nations, under the United Nations Charter and international law.”

Additionally, it cites the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations as a regulatory framework for states and international organisations, in particular the working relationship between the United Nations and the City of New York.

Citing the two agreements, the G77 is calling for all “necessary measures to ensure permanent missions accredited to the United Nations and their staff are granted equal, fair and non-discriminatory treatment by the banking system.”

Asked for an official response, U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told IPS: “We would not comment on a draft resolution.”

At a closed-door meeting of the G77 last month, speaker after speaker lambasted banks in the city for selectively cutting off the banking system from the diplomatic community, describing the action as “outrageous”.

Their anger was directed mostly at JP Morgan Chase (formerly Chemical bank) which was once considered part of the U.N. family – and a preferred bank by most diplomats – and at one time was housed in the secretariat building.

The G77 is expected to hold consultations with member states outside the Group, specifically Western nations, before tabling the resolution with the 193-member General Assembly later this month.

If any proposed amendments are aimed at weakening the resolution, the G77 will go for a vote in the Assembly with its agreed text, a G77 diplomat told IPS Thursday.

But with the Group having more than two-thirds majority in the Assembly, the resolution is expected to be adopted either with or without the support of Western nations.

If adopted by a majority vote, the secretary-general is expected to abide by the resolution and respond to its demands.

The draft resolution also requests the secretary-general to review and report to the General Assembly, within 120 days of its adoption, “of any obstacles or impediments observed in the accounts of permanent missions or their staff at the JP Morgan Chase Bank in the City of New York, and the impact these impediments have on the adequate functioning of their offices.”

And to this end, the G77 invites all members to provide the secretary-general with relevant information that will facilitate the elaboration of such report.

In an appeal to the United States, the G77 has also underscored the importance of the host country taking the necessary measures to ensure that personal data and information of persons affected by the closure of accounts is kept confidential by banking institutions, and requests the secretary-general to work with the host country in that regard and to report to the General Assembly within 90 days.

The closure of accounts was triggered by a request from the U.S. treasury, which wanted all banks to meticulously report every single transaction of some 70 “blacklisted” U.N. diplomatic missions, and individual diplomats – perhaps as part of a monitoring system to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing.

But the banks have said such an elaborate exercise is administratively expensive and cumbersome.

And as a convenient alternative, they have closed down, or are in the process of closing down, all accounts, shutting off banks from the diplomatic community in New York.

Chase handles most of the accounts and money transfers of the United Nations and its agencies, running into billions of dollars. Credit: Jim the Photographer/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2014 (IPS)

Addressing a closed-door meeting of the Group of 77 (G77) developing countries last week, a visibly angry Latin American delegate recounted the growing new hostility towards foreign diplomats in New York city.

In some residential buildings, he said, there were covert signs conveying an unfriendly message: “Pets and diplomats not welcome.”

It is bad enough for U.N. diplomats to be lumped together in the company of dogs and cats in the city’s high-rise buildings, he bluntly told delegates, but now “the banking sector is treating us as criminals.”

At a meeting of the 132-member G77, the largest single coalition of developing countries, speaker after speaker lambasted banks in the city for selectively cutting off the banking system from the diplomatic community, describing the action as “outrageous”.

Their anger was directed mostly at JP Morgan Chase (formerly Chemical bank) which was once considered part of the U.N. family – and a preferred bank by most diplomats – and at one time housed in the secretariat building.

Chase also handles most of the accounts and money transfers of the United Nations and its agencies, running into billions of dollars.

The U.S. treasury apparently has informed all banks that every single transaction of some 70 “blacklisted” U.N. diplomatic missions, and even individual diplomats, be meticulously reported back to Washington (perhaps as part of a monitoring system to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing).

The banks have responded that such an elaborate exercise is administratively expensive and cumbersome. So as a convenient alternative, they have closed down, or are in the process of closing down, all accounts, shutting out the diplomatic community in New York.

As one diplomat warned, if this situation continues, “we may have to request cash in diplomatic pouches from our home countries, and bank our money under mattresses.”

There are reports that some diplomatic missions want to pay their annual dues to the United Nations in hard cash, while others, citing “diplomatic reciprocity”, want the Secretariat to retaliate by closing its own accounts with these banks.

Ian Williams, a longstanding U.N. correspondent and senior analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus, wonders why banks should even bother monitoring U.N. missions and diplomats when the U.S National Security Agency (NSA) can perhaps do a better job.

The NSA, which has already been accused of tapping telephones and monitoring the movements of diplomats, could probably provide details of all bank transactions entered electronically, he said, because they are known to have the capacity to do so.

“Unless you can find a bank that uses paper ledgers and an abacus,” Williams told IPS, with tongue firmly entrenched in his cheek.

When the United Nations decided to locate its secretariat in the city of New York, the United States signed a ‘headquarters agreement’ back in 1947 not only ensuring diplomatic immunity to foreign diplomats but also pledging to facilitate the day-to-day activities of member states without any hindrance.

Williams said the United States has never been enthusiastic at accommodating itself to international law, as was proven when the General Assembly temporarily relocated to Geneva because Washington refused a visa for Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to visit New York in December 1988.

In his address to the General Assembly session in Geneva, perhaps the only one of its kind, Arafat took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement by saying “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honourable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.

The story about the new dispute between the diplomatic community and the banks surfaced in the Inner City Press blog last week.

But IPS ran a detailed story titled Banks Blacklist U.N. Missions back in January 2011, when financial institutions first imposed this rule on some U.N. missions, but not on diplomats.

At the G77 meeting, the most vocal country was China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council, which complained that its bank accounts were closed in 2011.

The problem was not the closed accounts per se, said a Chinese delegate, “but more serious was the issue that some countries were targeted, mostly developing countries.”

An Asian diplomat told IPS that to the best of his knowledge, the bank accounts of most, or all, Western missions were left untouched.

“Why this double standard?” he asked.

Besides China, the countries that led the protest at the G77 meeting included Bolivia (the current G77 chair), Colombia, Argentina, Iran, Kenya, Sudan, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Honduras and Sri Lanka.

Ambassador Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told IPS there has been a suggestion that the U.N. Secretariat wield its considerable commercial clout by ceasing to deal with banks which have closed the accounts of certain diplomatic missions and diplomats attached to such missions

“The U.N.’s transactions amount to many billions of dollars per year,” he noted. “If the diplomats of member states and their missions are not welcome at these banks, why should the United Nations, which is an organisation of the same member states, continue to deal with them?”

Williams said there is an underlying principle of ‘do as we say, not do as we do’.

Presumably, under the Vienna Conventions, diplomatic bank accounts should have similar protections as other diplomatic communications, but the banks would need assurances from the U.S. authorities to exempt them from the Orwellian scrutiny they subject everybody else to, he added.

“So the missions will now be forced to send cash – tending to suspicions of money laundering. Indeed, we know some missions have done just that, but U.S. insularity now gives them an excuse for their behavior,” said Williams, U.N. correspondent for the Tribune and author of “U.N. for Beginners”.

Asked for an official response, U.N.’s Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told IPS the secretary-general shares the concerns of the Group of 77, and the U.N. has taken up the issue with the host country and Chase.

“The Secretariat has also initiated discussions with other financial institutions to assist with finding alternative banking arrangements for the affected missions and their staff,” he added.

NGO representatives lead by Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International’s executive director, stormed out of the climate change talks in Warsaw, Poland. Courtesy: Wambi Michael

By Wambi Michael
WARSAW, Nov 21 2013 (IPS)

Hundreds of representatives from various NGOs walked out of the negotiating rooms at the United Nations climate talks in Poland on Thursday in protest against the reluctance by developed nations to commit towards achieving a global climate treaty.

Donning white T-shirts with the slogan: “polluters talk, we walk”, the protestors, which included representatives from Oxfam International, Greenpeace International, the International Trade Union Confederation, and ActionAid International, marched quietly towards the conference exits as U.N. security ensured they left peacefully. Their departure from the talks sets the stage for renewed civil society pressure on governments to take meaningful action against climate change.

Oxfam International’s executive director Winnie Byanyima told IPS that they walked out because there was almost no progress on the key issues that they had expected the COP19 climate summit to deliver on.

“This is a wakeup call to our governments, particularly the rich countries that are behaving irresponsibly by failing to take responsibility for the climate crisis. We are going out to mobilise so that they cannot ignore the voices of their citizens,” said Byanyima.

She said NGOs had expected to see pronouncements by developed nations for the provision of funds for adaptation and meeting the emission reduction targets, but with the conference ending on Nov. 22, this did not appear to be a possibility.

This comes a day after the G77+China group of 133 developing countries walked out of negotiations on a new international deal to combat climate change in protest against developed countries’ reluctance to commit to loss and damage.

“We as civil society are ready to engage with ministers and delegations who actually come to negotiate in good faith. But at the Warsaw conference, rich country governments have come with nothing to offer,” said a statement issued by the group of organisations that led the walkout here.

“Many developing country governments are also struggling and failing to stand up for the needs and rights of their people. It is clear that if countries continue acting in this way, the next two days of negotiations will not deliver the climate action the world so desperately needs,” the statement said.

Mithika Mwenda, the general secretary of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, said if rich industrialised countries continued to block the talks, they would “hold them to account”.

“We will not accept delay and we will demand our governments withdraw from an unsatisfactory outcome,” he told IPS.

COP19, according to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, is mainly for planning purposes ahead of next year’s conference in Lima, Peru and the 2015 conference in France. It is not expected to have pronouncements from governments.

But Byanyima said that NGOs and social movements expected Warsaw to build the momentum towards next year’s conference in Lima, Peru. She said instead of doing this, governments were going in circles on issues that have been on the table for close to five years.

“It was intended to be a planning COP but we see no plans, we see no clear road map regarding emission targets, regarding resources. We are not going to get an agreement in an environment of no trust, in an environment of no plan,” said Byanyima.

Hajeet Singh of ActionAid International told IPS they wanted a clear roadmap on emissions reductions by 2015.

“This is not coming out. There is no money on the table, which was promised to us last year. We don’t see the loss and damage mechanism coming up and yet that is want we want to deal with disasters like what we have just experienced in Philippines. There is nothing that we are achieving here and that is why we are walking out.”  On Nov. 8 super-typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, killing over 2,300 and affecting over 11 million people.

Singh said that the NGOs and social movements had expected governments in Warsaw to agree on concrete steps to devote political energy to mobilising climate finance. He said they wanted to ensure that a clear trajectory was agreed on to scale up public finance towards 100 billion dollars per annum by 2020.

Matthias Groote, the head of the European Parliament’s delegation at the Warsaw talks, said in a statement shortly after the walkout that the negotiations had reached a critical stage and called on the COP presidency to act so COP19 did not end in failure.

“There is a growing sense of frustration here in Warsaw, and the concern is over how few results have been achieved so far. We need to agree on the steps towards a global climate agreement. Instead some are backtracking on their previous commitments,” said Groote.

The EU has offered to increase emission reductions by 30 percent if other major emitter countries commit themselves to comparable terms.

But Mwenda said the failure of industrialised nations at Warsaw to agree on an instrument for compensation for loss and damage was a betrayal to poor and least developed countries that increasingly face climate–related losses and damages.

“It is a disaster for many of our countries, especially when there is empirical and scientific evidence to show that climate change-related losses are on the increase,” he said.

A World Bank report released at Warsaw warned that the costs and damage from extreme weather were growing.

It said while all countries are impacted, developing nations bear the brunt of mounting losses. The report said that the loss and damage from disasters have been rising over the last three decades, from an annual average of around 50 billion dollars in the 1980s to just under 200 billion dollars each year in the last decade.

The G77+China group of 133 developing countries negotiating a new international deal at COP19 in Warsaw to combat climate change walked out of the talks in the wee hours of Wednesday morning to protest developed countries’ reluctance to commit to loss and damage.

“Today at 4 a.m. the delegation of Bolivia and all delegations of G77 walked out because we do not see a clear cut commitment by developed countries to reach an agreement,” said Bolivian negotiator Rene Orellana speaking on Wednesday morning at the COP19 climate summit.

What seems to have happened at the closed night-time session of the so-called contact group of loss and damage is that Juan Hoffmaister, the Bolivian negotiator on loss and damage, who was representing the entire G77 + China group, walked out in the name of developing countries. The walk-out has a strong symbolic value and is unprecedented in the last decade of climate talks.

Orellana further explained that the walk-out was sparked by the attitude of developed countries, among them Norway, which proposed that loss and damage be discussed not under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as developing countries requested but under the looser Rio+20 sustainable development framework.

“G77 put forward a very constructive proposal on loss and damage and have been engaging meaningfully with all countries, but [during the loss and damage session taking place into the early hours of Nov. 20], Australians were behaving like high school boys in class, their behaviour was rude and disrespectful,” commented Harjeet Singh from the NGO ActionAid International on Wednesday.

“On top of that, in the middle of the night, Norway came up with a proposal whereby they rejected everything, they rejected discussing socioeconomic losses, non-economic losses, rehabilitation, compensation,” added Singh. “But these are the crucial elements of loss and damage; if you do not discuss these, how can you discuss loss and damage?”

Developing countries negotiating at COP19 have repeatedly stated that creating an international mechanism under UNFCCC to address loss and damage is the biggest expectation they have of the Warsaw meeting.

G77+China last week proposed a text meant to provide the basis of negotiations for creating such an international mechanism for loss and damage, which called for this issue to be treated as a third, separate, pillar in the UNFCCC process, in addition to mitigation and adaptation.

The super-typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines right before COP19 started brought even more to the fore the fact that some countries are already suffering the deadly impacts of climate change, having moved into the so-called “post-adaptation” phase. For these countries, assistance to deal with the loss and damage already caused by climate change would be crucial, argued G77+China.

But developed countries have been reluctant to give such a prominent role under UNFCCC to loss and damage.

According to a U.S. document outlining Washington’s negotiating position at COP which was leaked to the media during the first week of the Warsaw meeting, accepting loss and damage as a third pillar would mean “focusing on blame and liability”. That is, developed countries would have to accept historical responsibility for emissions causing climate change and commit to paying the price.

Australia and Norway appear to have carried this reluctance towards loss and damage into the midnight session.

Speaking on Wednesday, UK negotiator Ed Davey confirmed his country’s support for the developed countries’ resistance. Davey said, “We do not accept the argument on compensation. I don’t think the compensation analysis is fair and sensible, but that does not mean we are not committed to helping the poorest countries adapt.”

EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard stated that it was concerning that developing countries took such a tough stance and made an appeal for countries not to backtrack on talks.

While the walk-out makes developing countries vulnerable to the accusation of being responsible for holding back the Warsaw negotiations, developing countries and NGOs are pointing out that it was the attitude and behaviour of developed countries that forced them to issue such an ultimatum in the first place.

“We are very disappointed by the slow process on negotiations on loss and damage, the most important measure of success here in Warsaw,” said Philippines negotiator Yeb Sano on Wednesday.

“The walk-out happened because a very strong proposal for a loss and damage mechanism put forward by G77 and China did not receive enough traction,” explained Meena Raman from the NGO Third World Network. “This is a postponing tactic by developed countries in order not to make a decision on loss and damage here in Warsaw.”

Since COP19 began on Nov. 11, developed countries have given few signs of being committed to a meaningful international climate deal.

This week, Japan announced that it would cut a previous commitment of reducing CO2 emissions by 25 percent by 2020 to a three percent cut only. Australia recently announced an intention to scrap an existing carbon tax, while Canada indicated it might not meet a pledge to reduce emissions made at the Copenhagen 2009 COP.

Developing countries have indicated that they are ready to discuss more if developed countries take a more serious stance. As an example, Indian Minister of Environment Jayanthi Natarajan declared Wednesday upon arrival in Warsaw that her country would be open to temporarily using the existing Green Climate Fund for doing immediate disbursements for loss and damage, until a proper international mechanism is set in place.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is one of the most vociferous advocates of a world free of nuclear weapons.

The lack of publicity stands in contrast to the strong public stand taken by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

“Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals,” he says. “They are critical to global peace and security.”

Still, the Group of 77, the largest single coalition of 132 developing countries, implicitly accuses the United Nations of falling short in its efforts to publicise a meeting on nuclear disarmament scheduled to take place Sep. 26.

Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji, the G77 chair, last week described the upcoming talks as “the first-ever high level meeting of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament.”

He said the meeting is of importance to developing nations, and therefore, all efforts should be made to give it timely and wide publicity.

A G77 delegate told IPS the conference is not getting the advance publicity it should, probably because three of the big powers, the United States, UK and France, are not supportive of the meeting.

“We have not seen anything on the high level meeting so far,” he added.

The lack of coverage stands in contrast to the strong public stand taken by the secretary-general, who has consistently called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Asked about the significance of the upcoming meeting, Dr. John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS the meeting is a chance for world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and others, to give direction to the nuclear disarmament enterprise, “which is now drifting aimlessly despite much rhetoric over the past five years.”

“Of course they should reassert that the global elimination of nuclear weapons is a shared aim of the international community,” he said.

But they can and should do more, he said, specifically to set in motion concrete, multilateral processes to achieve that objective.

“If there can be a Nuclear Security Summit process, focused on securing nuclear materials, why can there not be a Nuclear Disarmament Summit Process?” he asked.

Or definitive action could be taken to overcome the 16-year deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament, if necessary by establishing a separate process, Dr Burroughs said.

The resolution calling for the high-level meeting, which was sponsored by Indonesia and the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement, was adopted last December in the General Assembly by a vote of 179 to none against, with four abstentions (Israel, and three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely France, UK and the United States).

The other two permanent members, China and Russia, voted for the resolution.

All five permanent members are the world’s five declared nuclear powers, with India, Pakistan, Israel, and more recently North Korea, outside the P-5 nuclear club.

In an explanation of his country’s decision to abstain on the vote, Guy Pollard, deputy permanent representative of the UK, told delegates last December, “We question the value of holding a high-level meeting (HLM) of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament when there are already sufficient venues for such discussion.”

He cited the General Assembly’s First Committee (on Disarmament), the U.N. Disarmament Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament.

“We are puzzled about how such a HLM will further the goals of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Action Plan that was agreed by consensus in 2010,” Pollard said.

“In our view,” he said, “this roadmap of actions offers the best way of taking forward the multilateral nuclear disarmament agenda, along with related issues.”

“We continue to believe that nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are mutually reinforcing and therefore regret that this high level meeting doesn’t treat both of these aspects in a balanced manner,” Pollard said.

Meanwhile, in a new study released last month, George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, points out one of the few ways that President Obama could restore confidence in U.S. intentions would be to update the declaration of the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy, including in defence of its allies.

“In his searching Nobel Peace Prize speech (in December 2009), Obama recognised the occasional inescapability of war and the imperative of waging it justly,” Perkovich said.

So, too, Obama now could examine how the ongoing existence of nuclear arsenals, even if temporary, can be reconciled with the moral-strategic imperative to prevent their use, says the study titled “Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine.”

“The president could articulate a limited framework for the legitimate use of nuclear weapons that the United States believes would be defensible for others to follow as long as nuclear weapons remain,” it says.

Such a nuclear policy, says Perkovich, could then be conveyed in the U.S. Defence Department’s Quadrennial Posture Review, which is due later this year.

Dr. Burroughs told IPS that non-nuclear weapon states have been doing their best to create opportunities to set a clear course on disarmament.

At the initiative of Austria, Mexico and Norway, the General Assembly in 2012 established an open-ended working group on taking forward proposals on multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, scheduled to meet for three weeks this summer in Geneva.

Norway hosted a conference in Oslo in March on the humanitarian impact of nuclear explosions.

And Indonesia and the Non-Aligned Movement proposed the resolution last year that scheduled the September high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament.

“However, the P-5 in the Security Council have been recalcitrant. So far they have said they will not participate in the open-ended working group,” said Dr. Burroughs.

They also declined the invitation to participate in the Oslo meeting. And last year the UK, the United States, and France, along with Israel, abstained on the resolution scheduling the high-level meeting, expressing doubt as to its value, he added.

“So the personal engagement of heads of state/government and foreign ministers is clearly necessary,” Burroughs said.

At lower levels, the Permanent Five officials have been floundering, he added.

“Unless there is a change of tune coming from the very top, the September meeting will turn out to be a fruitless exercise,” he said.

The crisis on the Korean peninsula should be a wake-up call.

The nuclear threats exchanged by North Korea and the United States have once again laid bare an often underappreciated fact, the unacceptable risks arising from reliance on nuclear weapons.

In September, P-5 leaders and other governments possessing nuclear arsenals should seize the moment to signal clearly, to their own governments as well as to the world, that they will now engage constructively with non-nuclear weapon states on a process for the global elimination of nuclear weapons, he said.

Parliamentarians, mayors, and civil society groups working for a nuclear weapons-free world should also take advantage of this global platform, which surprisingly is the first time a General Assembly high-level meeting will be held on nuclear disarmament, Dr Burroughs said.

By Marzieh Goudarzi
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 2013 (IPS)

As the global South claims a greater share of the world’s GDP, is it also progressing in terms of overall human development? How has this southward tipping of the scale affected the dynamics of international trade? What is the role of global governance in mediating this period of change?

José Antonio Ocampo. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

The 2013 U.N. Human Development Report entitled, “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World” and its lead author, Khalid Malik, suggest that as the South grows economically, its citizens experience an “expansion of human capabilities and choices” that is leading to further social and political development.

Others are more sceptical of the purported “rise of the South”, pointing to the world’s widening income inequality, the lack of correlation between economic growth and equitable and sustainable socio-economic policies, and relatively unchanging global power dynamics.

On Monday, Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought hosted a conference to discuss these issues with panelists including Malik, U.N. Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, and Dr. Jose Antonio Ocampo, a professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General of Economic and Social Affairs.

Ocampo called Malik’s characterisation of the rise of the South as a “tectonic change” a bit strong.

While he recognises the important changes that are occurring now, with regard to overall human development Ocampo says, “It’s a process that will have long-term implications.”

Excerpts from IPS’s interview with Ocampo on the impact of newly rising economies in international trade and global governance follow.

Q: Both you and Ambassador de Alba agree on the importance of multilateral global governance in terms of human development. Ambassador de Alba addressed the shortcomings of current institutions and, in particular, the U.N.’s inefficient decision-making processes. Discuss what productive, multilateral global governance would look like.

A: I have written extensively on the G20 and my perspective is that these informal institutions, which I call “elite multilateralism”, are not the best form of global governance. I like “the G’s” when they are part of multilateral institutions.

Global governance derives its legitimacy at the global level just as governance does at a national level, from universality. You have to have universal membership. For that purpose, the best way for these “G’s” to work is within a formal multilateral setting.

At the same time, I agree that you have to have effective decision-making mechanisms. Smaller decision-making bodies, in which everyone is directly represented, are fundamental. In all democracies, decisions are taken by a limited number of actors at the end, but those actors have to be representing all of the membership.

Q: What is the state of South-South trade relationships today? What constitutes an ideal South-South partnership that allows for progress toward a more advanced, dynamic economy?

A: There is one sort of South-South trade that is really part of North-South trade. For example, Southeast Asia is producing parts and capital goods that are assembled in China and then exported to the U.S.

In the case of China-India, it’s a huge deficit for India and surplus for China. There is a second China-centered relationship, in which China essentially imports raw commodities and exports manufactured goods. I would say, for commodity producers – i.e. sub-Saharan African, South America, and some of the Middle East – that’s an opportunity. But it’s still a very imbalanced trade relationship. In the long-term, you have to diversify away from that.

There is a third type which are legitimately South-South flows in which you have, more or less, a balanced relationship. For example, the inter-regional trade in Latin America is one relationship of that type – it starts and ends in developing countries. I think that’s the most positive of all, but it’s less common.

Q: As these newly rising economies close the income gap that separates them from developed countries, what do you think characterises fair and mutually-beneficial North-South partnerships?

A: In the past, the North-South relationship was considered to be an asymmetric relationship in which the North had to support the development of the South so it could cash out. I think that concept has become obsolete because of the heterogeneity of developing countries.

Ambassador de Alba mentioned this almost sacred principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. In the past, developing countries wanted to be treated according to the second part of that principle – “differentiated” – and I think, as de Alba pointed out, the “differentiated” still has to be considered today.

Even major emerging economies are developing countries – they are technologically dependent, they still have a large share of the labour force in low productivity activities, and the GDP per capita is still a fraction of that of developed countries. So they have a right to be treated with some differences internationally. But they are, at the same time, responsible and the responsibility those countries have is very important.

Q: How have Southern governments been an obstacle to human development and, on the other hand, what should they be prioritising in order to create positive conditions for growth?

A: The basic problem is that power ends up in the hands of the elite that uses power to further its own interests. This has been associated with developing countries, but it can also happen in developed countries, particularly in the financial sector. There has been a change in that regard during the recent crisis; now there is a bit more hope that financial policy will be detached from financial interests.

Successful human development strategy has to include very active social policy, including education, health, and social protections, and at the same time very active economic development policy, particularly the generation of employment.

We have seen so many cases of countries that have improvements in education and when an educated labour force comes to the market, there is no employment to absorb that population. You have to have an active social policy but also an active economic policy and the basic connection between the two is called employment.

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