STWR - Share The World's Resources

As international commerce expands, the costs are often borne by people at the bottom of the economic ladder. If they have to cross borders in search of their livelihood, trade can become a driver of increased migration, explains Peter Costantini.

WTO director general Pascal Lamy's claim that the poorest will benefit from the conclusion of the Doha round is utterly without foundation. The negotiations should be abandoned and a new process put in place to undo the damage of past trade liberalisations, argues John Hilary.

With a new lease on life in the wake of the financial crisis, the IMF is now enforcing damaging economic reforms on those countries already struggling with the effects of the collapse. Instead, such harsh restructuring should be applied to the institution itself, writes Jayati Ghosh.

The IMF claims to have become more flexible in its lending requirements to cash-strapped countries. Yet as this joint report indicates, the Fund is still imposing inappropriate conditions on borrowers that will erode social protection for the poor.

Whilst the richest countries remain firmly in control of the IMF and World Bank, replacing the G8 with the G20 will have little impact on the balance of global economic power. Meaningful reform of the world economy is still a long way off, argues Mark Weisbrot.

The push to replace the US dollar as the global reserve currency is growing, but what is the alternative? A new global framework must be established outside the IMF based on shared responsiblity, argues Nick Dearden.

At the London summit, the G20 called for $250 billion worth of SDRs to be injected into the global economy. Yet most of these resources won't reach the poorest countries, since they will be allocated on the basis of IMF quotas determined by the size of countries' economies, says Soren Ambrose.