STWR - Share The World's Resources

31st May 07, Allister McGregor, eGov Monitor

International Development should be about well being of individuals and communities argues Prof. McGregor, based on his research and empirical studies in four countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Thailand).

A lot, argues Allister McGregor, Director of the Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) Research Group at the University of Bath. The wellbeing of men, women and children ought to be the fundamental objective of international development, but we have displaced or lost sight of this objective both in how we study the relationship between development and poverty and also in the formulation of policy to address widespread illbeing and suffering in developing countries. The result is that international development policies and spending throughout the 20th century failed to have the impacts on poverty eradication that we might have hoped for or expected.

16th May 07 - Eveline Herfkens, Global Policy Forum

In a few weeks, eight of the world’s most important leaders will meet in Heiligendamm. Joining them will be media and activists from around the world, closely following the proceedings, ready to analyse the implications of every word. So as the G8 meets again, what can we expect? Well, for those working towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, I would say not much.

What we know is that leaders are likely to announce a few small sectoral initiatives on poverty. While I am sure that these will make the headlines and sound important, I’m equally convinced they won’t make much of a difference. And even if leaders were to surprise us with more ‘important sounding’ announcements, I would still remain nonplussed. Why? Because I’ve seen it all before. Remember Gleneagles? It seems the G8 leaders would conveniently forget. And going further back – remember the Africa Action Plan from Kananaskis, in 2002, where G8 leaders promised that no poor country with the plans and policies to reduce poverty would be thwarted in their efforts because of lack of funding?

13th May 07 - Jeffrey Sachs, MiamiHerald.com

The Millennium Development Goals are the world's agreed goals to cut poverty, hunger and disease. Established in 2000, their targets were to be met by 2015. We are now at the halfway point. So far, despite endless words about increasing aid to poor countries, the rich G-8 countries are reneging on their part of the bargain.

Cynicism abounds here. At the G-8 Gleneagles Summit in 2005, member countries pledged to double aid to Africa by 2010. Soon after the summit, I was invited to a small, high-level meeting to discuss the summit's follow-up. I asked for a spreadsheet showing the year-by-year planned increases and the allocation of those planned increases across donor and recipient countries.

25 April 07 - Larry Elliott and Kate Connolly, The Guardian

The west's foot-dragging over aid pledges to Africa was described last night as "grotesque" and a threat to the lives of the world's poor by the body set up by Tony Blair to monitor the results of Britain's Gleneagles summit.

Almost two years after the G8 group of leading industrial nations promised to boost development assistance by $50bn a year by 2010, the Africa Progress Panel headed by the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said rich countries were only 10% of the way to their target.

21st April 07, Stephen Browne, openDemocracy 

It is exactly twenty years since Gro Harlem Brundtland's World Commission on Environment and Development produced Our Common Future. The report exhorted humanity to pursue "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". It firmly affixed the word "sustainable" to development and coined what is still the most commonly used phrase for the process of global advancement.

Has its time come at last?

The latest overseas aid figures are no suprise to the developing world, writes Adam Parsons. Broken promises will continue to make newspaper headlines until the deeper contradictions and biases of the current economic approach are addressed.