Tag Archives: transparency

Latest Developments, May 1

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US in Mali
The Washington Post reports that the US has sent “a small number” of troops to Mali despite earlier promises not to do so:

“About 10 U.S. military personnel are in Mali to provide ‘liaison support’ to French and African troops but are not engaged in combat operations, said Lt. Col. Robert Firman, a Pentagon spokesman. Twelve others are assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, the capital, he added.
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Since the coup, there have been signs that some U.S. Special Operations forces have been deployed to Mali on undeclared missions. In April 2012, three U.S. soldiers were killed in a mysterious car crash in Bamako.
Last month, Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) suggested that U.S. commandos were ‘taking action’ in Mali.”

Medical reinforcements
The BBC reports that the US has sent additional medical staff to its Guantanamo Bay prison to deal with a growing hunger strike among detainees:

“About 40 nurses and other specialists arrived at the weekend, camp spokesman Lt Col Samuel House said.
He said that 100 of 166 detainees were now on hunger strike, with 21 of them being force-fed through a tube.
The inmates are protesting against their indefinite detention. Most are being held without charge.”

As open as they want to be
Platts reports that Switzerland’s commodity traders are pushing the Swiss government to water proposed “transparency requirements” down to mere “voluntary principles”:

“The Swiss government has said it is at risk of reputational damage in the international community because of its role as a commodity trading hub, and in May last year set up an interdepartmental “platform” comprising the Swiss finance, foreign and economy departments to examine the role of commodity trading in the country.
Switzerland is home to the world’s biggest oil and other commodity trading houses, including oil traders Vitol, Glencore, Trafigura, Mercuria and Gunvor.”

Taking responsibility
Reuters reports that the UK’s Primark and Canada’s Loblaw have become the first two Western retailers to promise compensation for the families of victims of the collapsed garment factories that killed nearly 400 in Bangladesh last week:

“The collapsed complex housed a number of factories that made clothing for Western brands.
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Loblaw has said it regularly conducts audits to ensure its garments are manufactured responsibly, but focuses on labor practices and not building construction.
Loblaw said it would issue updates as it developed details of its compensation plan.
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Primark, owned by FTSE 100 company Associated British Foods , said on Monday that it was working with a local NGO to help victims of the disaster.
It pledged to provide long-term aid for children who lost parents, financial aid for the injured and payments to families of the victims.”

Swelling protests
The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian mining company Eldorado has triggered “something akin to civil war” in northern Greece:

“The first mobilizations against the expansion of the old mines in the Halkidiki peninsula, the birthplace of Aristotle in northeastern Greece, began in late 2011. That’s when Vancouver’s Eldorado Gold Corp. grabbed most of the local mining industry and unveiled plans for a €1-billion ($1.32-billion) development that would turn the recession-stricken region into a gold-producing powerhouse.
But development skeptics asked: At what cost to the environment, tourism and agriculture? They concluded that the massive project, smack in the middle of a part of Greece that could pass for Tuscany, would do more harm than good and took to the streets. ‘To live, you need, air, soil and water,’ explains Nina Karina, 50, an artist who opposes Eldorado. ‘This investment takes away all three from us.’ ”

NGO paradox
Plain Sense’s Fairouz El Tom argues that many of the world’s top 100 NGOs have a board make-up at odds with their stated mission:

“In different ways, the NGOs surveyed promote ideals of justice and social progress. Yet over half have board members who are affiliated with companies that invest in, or provide legal, marketing, or other services to the arms, tobacco and finance industries.”

Killing in the name
The New Yorker’s Steve Coll reviews two new books on ‘the return of Presidentially sanctioned assassinations’:

“But [Anwar] Awlaki’s case, troubling as it may be, raises a broader issue: the Administration’s refusal to disclose the criteria by which it condemns anyone, American or otherwise, to death. The information used in such cases is intelligence data rather than evidence; it is not subject to cross-examination or judicial review. Unanswered questions abound. Does the President require that intelligence used to convict a terror suspect in absentia be based on multiple sources, or is one sufficient? Must intercepts, photographs, or credible firsthand testimony be obtained, or can people be executed on the basis of hearsay from paid informants? How directly involved in violence must an individual be to receive a death sentence? At what point does a preacher’s hate speech warrant his being killed?”

Inflated claims
The Guardian reports on a new study that suggests aid figures reported by donor countries are “a very different thing” from the resources they actually transfer:

“Some donors, including Japan and Germany, receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year in interest repayments on the loans they give, said DI. In total, ‘if interest repayments are taken into account, the net resource flows associated with global [official development assistance] are approximately $5bn per annum lower than the reported total net ODA figure suggests,’ said a DI discussion paper this month.
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Net ODA figures subtract repayments made by recipients, but, according to current OECD rules, only account for principal repayments. Instead, interest repayments are recorded only as a memo item in OECD statistics.”

Latest Developments, December 19

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Creative corrupter
The New York Times has published an extensive report on retail giant Wal-Mart’s corrupting influence in Mexico, based on evidence from “tens of thousands of documents” and interviews with government officials and company employees:

“The Times’s examination reveals that Wal-Mart de Mexico was not the reluctant victim of a corrupt culture that insisted on bribes as the cost of doing business. Nor did it pay bribes merely to speed up routine approvals. Rather, Wal-Mart de Mexico was an aggressive and creative corrupter, offering large payoffs to get what the law otherwise prohibited. It used bribes to subvert democratic governance — public votes, open debates, transparent procedures. It used bribes to circumvent regulatory safeguards that protect Mexican citizens from unsafe construction. It used bribes to outflank rivals.
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Over and over, for example, the dates of bribe payments coincided with dates when critical permits were issued. Again and again, the strictly forbidden became miraculously attainable.”

First acquittal
Reuters reports that the International Criminal Court has handed down its second-ever decision, acquitting Congolese militia leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui:

“The court’s first verdict found [Thomas] Lubanga guilty of recruiting child soldiers to another militia in the same conflict in Ituri. Some observers said the different outcomes of the trials for militia leaders from different tribes could cause new friction.
‘Lubanga was a Hema leader, and the acquittal of a Ngudjolo, a Lendu, just after the conviction of a Hema could exacerbate tension between the two ethnicities in Ituri,’ said Jennifer Easterday of the Open Society Justice Initiative.”

Calling it off
Association Sherpa has ended its partnership with French nuclear giant Areva, calling the company’s health measures in Niger and Gabon “public relations exercises”:

“The arrival of Luc Oursel at the head of Areva coincided with a change in the culture of the company in terms of sustainable development and as a result, led to a questioning of its capacity to respect the letter and spirit of the 2009 agreements:

  • While the 2009 accords led to the much-needed medical monitoring of over 700 African workers, it is incomprehensible and unacceptable that the compensation process, which benefited the families of two French expatriates (a patently insufficient number), offered nothing to any Nigerien or Gabonese workers even though the medical condition of more than 100 of them was examined;
  • The decontamination of [Gabon’s] Mounana site, where production stopped in 1999, promised by [former CEO] Anne Lauvergnon, has stalled. It was carried out only partially and unsatisfactorily, with the result that local populations are still exposed to radiation risks;” [Translated from the French]

Aid hypocrisy
The Guardian reports on the UK’s Department for International Development’s “breathtaking arrogance” for demanding transparency from recipient governments while refusing to make public a report on its own expenditures:

“The department said releasing the report could “undermine DfID’s commercial interests and lead to DfID incurring greater expense which would consequently undermine our ability to fulfil our role and to achieve value for money in the use of public funds”.
Disclosure could also reveal personal data about individuals, make other governments and international organisations less willing to share information with Britain, and ‘severely prejudice the policy development process’ within government by inhibiting open discussion, it said.”

Good intentions
The Financial Times reports that American legislation aimed at ending the role of minerals in fuelling DR Congo’s conflict is making matters worse so far:

“ ‘We’re getting the opposite of what they wanted. And we still have conflict,’ says Emmanuel Ndimubanzi, head of North Kivu provisional government’s mining division, who says tens of thousands of jobs across the sector have been lost. A proposal in the act to spend $25m to help out-of-work find jobs and fund mineral tracing schemes was dropped.
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The landmark US [Dodd-Frank] act has created the first compulsory framework to disclose the provenance of potential conflict minerals across the industry. But beset by delays, loopholes and vague guidance, it has complicated and impeded initiatives by industry, regional governments and international donors, as well as the UN and OECD. These include tagging schemes, chains of documentation and a mineralogical ‘fingerprinting’ pilot scheme already under way.”

Nuclear stagnation
Inter Press Service reports that the Federation of American Scientists has warned that the US and Russia are reducing their nuclear arsenals at a slowing rate:

“ ‘Both the United States and Russia appear to be more cautious about reducing further, placing more emphasis on “hedging” and reconstitution of reduced nuclear forces, and both are investing enormous sums of money in modernising their nuclear forces over the next decade,’ [FAS Nuclear Information Project director Hans M. Kristensen said.]
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Given the new data, the implication is that either a new set of arms-reduction treaties will need to be agreed in coming years, or each country will need to embark on new unilateral programmes of reduction. If neither of those takes place, ‘large nuclear forces could be retained far into the future.’ ”

Tarnished reputation
The Montreal Gazette reports on calls from both inside and outside Canada for Ottawa to hold the country’s mining companies to account for their behaviour abroad:

“But as mining investment has exploded over the last decade, so too have conflicts involving Canadian mines, from the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic, where 25 people were injured in clashes with police in September, to the Pierina mine in Peru, where one person was killed that same month. (Both are mines owned by Barrick Gold, but protests are not restricted to Barrick mines.)
All the while the Canadian government’s role in defending, even promoting, mining companies’ interests has solidified.”

Global ambulance chasers
CorpWatch reports on a growing and lucrative branch of law that involves suing governments on behalf of corporations:

“Legal experts have denounced this trend. ‘Investment treaty arbitration … imposes exceptionally powerful legal and economic constraints on governments and, by extension, on democratic choice, in order to protect from regulation the assets of multinational firms,’ writes Professor Gus van Harten of the Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
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There are five major arbitration tribunals that take on these cases – the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington DC, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague, the Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) in London, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris and the Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm (SCC).
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The number of such lawsuits registered at the ICSID has skyrocketed. In 1996, just 38 cases were under arbitration but by 2011, this had risen almost 12 fold to 450.”

Latest Developments, July 19

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Debt speculation
The Guardian reports that the UK’s privy council has ruled that a “vulture fund” cannot collect $100 million on a DR Congo debt that was, before interest, a thirtieth of that amount:

“In an attempt to skirt British law, which bans ‘vulture funds’ from buying poor nations’ debts on the cheap before suing them for 10-100 times the amount paid, [FG Hemisphere’s Peter] Grossman took the case to Jersey, a crown dependency not covered by the UK law.
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Before turning to the Jersey loophole, Grossman’s company had unsuccessfully tried to seize the DRC’s embassy in Washington as a downpayment on the debt.”

Fatal strike
The Globe and Mail reports Canadian-based First Quantum Minerals has temporarily shut down operations at a copper and gold mine in Mauritania due to an “illegal strike” that has already claimed the life of one worker:

“According to local reports, demonstrators clashed with security forces outside the Guelb Moghrein mine over the weekend as workers demanded better pay and conditions. One worker died in the clashes, although further details about the circumstances were muddied amid differing reports.”

Dogs of war
The Daily Maverick reports that a leaked UN document accuses private security companies of violating international arms embargoes against Somalia and Eritrea:

“During the course of the [UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea]’s mandate, this highly profitable business has expanded beyond the provision of armed escorts to the leasing of arms, ammunition and security equipment, and the establishment of ‘floating armouries’ that operate in international waters beyond the remit of any effective international regulatory authority. PMSCs are currently holding approximately 7,000 weapons in circulation, which are either owned or leased.”

Deposed despots beware
Reuters reports that the International Court of Justice is expected to hand down a ruling on Friday that could create new legal obligations for countries with exiled former dictators residing on their territory:

“The ruling could worry former rulers like Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the Tunisian president overthrown in January 2011 at the start of the Arab Spring and now in exile in Saudi Arabia.
But it could also deter other leaders facing mounting violence at home, such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, from going into exile despite promises or guarantees of amnesty.
‘If Belgium is successful, it will mean that third states would be able to oblige states on whose territory an accused war criminal resides to either prosecute such persons or extradite them to a state which can and wishes to prosecute,’ Malcolm Shaw, a law professor at Cambridge University, said in an email.”

Easing pressure
The Independent reports that the UK government is proposing to relax EU sanctions against Zimbabwe, whereas opposition MP Peter Hain is calling for more sanctions:

“Mr Hain said: ‘Let us be clear: Zimbabwean military-controlled blood diamonds are now sold within the EU and almost certainly within the UK, appearing on wedding rings. It is time for jewellery companies to stop hiding behind the façade of the Kimberley Process [to stop diamonds being used to finance military activity] and take responsibility for their own supply chains.’ ”

Let’s make a deal
Reuters reports the US wants a new trade deal with the 5-nation East African Community, comprising Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi:

“[US deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs Michael] Froman said the proposal by Obama for a new trade deal was meant to encourage [growing investment in East Africa] and support further EAC integration. The deal would seek to guarantee American investors that they would be treated fairly and that their investments would be secure.
‘It calls for a focus on trade facilitation to reduce the bottlenecks at the border, such as moving to a single border clearance and harmonising customs documentation, to reduce delays and unnecessary costs,’ he said.”

Watering down the ATT
Embassy Magazine reports that opposition MPs are accusing the Canadian government of trying to sabotage the Arms Trade Treaty, currently under negotiation at the UN, by adding loopholes:

[NDP trade critic Don Davies] and other treaty supporters point to the Harper government’s desire not to include the mandatory tracking of ammunition, or detailed reporting on high-volume trades. They say another example of Canada’s attempts to gum up the treaty is Canada’s suggestion that no new money go to the UN to police the agreement’s implementation.
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Mr. Davies attended the first week of negotiations in New York, and said foreign delegations frequently asked him why Canada was trying to weaken the treaty by pushing for ammunition and other items to be exempt.
‘I got a lot of questions on Canada’s official position that not every transaction be recorded,’ he said. ‘They asked how we saw an effective arms trade treaty if from the outset, and by design, there are loopholes built into it.’ ”

Transparency hype
Using the example of Angola, Oxford University’s Ricardo Soares de Oliveira warns that transparency reforms can amount to little more than “upgrades of the status quo”:

“The contribution of the IMF and a number of Angolan technocrats towards macro-economic reform is undeniable. What is missing from the IMF’s assessment is the fact that the reforms have had next to no impact on the elite’s approach to development and the real lives of the poor.
tA lesson of the Angolan reform trajectory is self-evident yet frequently forgotten: transparency is merely a means to an end. By itself the transparency agenda is a technocratic exercise that savvy governments can easily game. You can have an oil-rich state tick all the boxes and come out on the other side without this having any implications whatsoever for the nature of governance and broad-based development.”

Latest Developments, February 8

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Fortress Europe
Agence France-Presse reports the European Commission has rejected a Greek request for funds to help build a fence along the Turkish border in order to stem illegal immigration. “ ‘The commission has decided not to follow up the Greek request because it considers it pointless,’ Michele Cercone, a European Commission spokesman, told a news briefing. ‘Fences and walls are short term measures that do not solve migration management issues in a structural way.’ It is up to EU states to decide how to secure their borders, but they have to take into account ‘international obligations including the respect of migrants, human rights,’ Cercone said.”

Give me your tired, your poor…
Yahoo! News reports that increasingly harsh American immigration laws, such as Alabama’s controversial HB 56 which prohibits “business transactions” between undocumented migrants and the state, are impacting people’s ability to obtain food.
“Last month, Kansas kicked more than 1,000 mixed-status families off its food stamp program when it joined three other states in adopting a stricter food stamp eligibility policy. A low-income family of five made up of two undocumented parents and three citizen children now has to show that its income is close to the poverty level for a family of three–not a family of five–in order to access food stamps. This is intended to prevent illegal immigrants from benefiting from food stamps, but immigration advocates say it will leave citizen kids hungry.”

Mining audit
Reuters reports that Zambia plans to audit all the country’s mining projects in search of back taxes it estimates at between $500 million and $1 billion.
“According to UK charity Christian Aid, more than half of the copper Zambia exported in 2008 was destined for Switzerland, but according to Swiss import data almost none of this arrived and [mines minister Wylbur] Simuusa said this trend continued.
This raises a number of transparency issues and activists say copper exported to Switzerland on paper often fetches a lower price than it would if it was exported elsewhere.
‘Once it leaves, where does it go? We don’t have a clue,’ he said.”

World Bank and tax havens
The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development’s María José Romero writes about revelations that the majority of clients of the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), are using tax havens.
“According to a recent report by Danish NGOs DanWatch and IBIS, ‘57 per cent of the companies analysed in the IFC’s extrac­tives portfolio from 2010 have channelled their investment in developing countries through an intermediate hold­ing company in a tax haven.’ Additionally, ‘more than a third of the countries hosting [the] IFC’s extractive projects have no specific policies on thin capitalisation,’ which means that IFC’s extractive-industry clients can minimise tax payments in developing countries by injecting as much debt and as little equity as possible into their operating subsidiaries.
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Civil society organisations have demanded changes in the IFC policy in order to ensure that investing in private sector companies has a positive impact on development.  According to Alvin Mosioma from Tax Justice Network, ‘the IFC should stop channelling public funds to companies using secrecy jurisdictions.’ To make effective and measurable progress towards financial transparency, the DanWatch report also recommends that ‘companies supported by IFC should present their annual accounts on a country-by-country and project-by-project basis, which would en­able host governments and civil society to iden­tify tax avoidance and evasion.’ ”

Resource scramble
A new Global Witness report suggests corruption and instability could worsen in Africa unless there is more transparency in the oil, gas and mining industries.
“Firstly, all companies involved in bidding rounds for oil licences, or that hold oil licences should fully disclose their ultimate beneficial owners. This level of transparency provides government and the public with the opportunity to begin to dispel suspicions that government officials may be benefitting illicitly from the allocation of oil licences. Additionally, the terms of all licences and contracts should be published to make it easier for the appropriate authorities and the public to determine that the terms of a contract are not unduly favourable to a company.”

Cynical aid
MiningWatch’s Catherine Coumans argues the Canadian International Development Agency’s decision to fund corporate social responsibility projects near mine sites is “intended to help Canadian mining companies compete for access to lucrative ore bodies in developing countries” where local opposition to mining is growing.
“Subsidizing the CSR projects of well-endowed multinationals is an irresponsible use of public funds by CIDA, particularly as these CSR projects mask rather than address the serious local- and national-level development deficits caused by mining.
If the Canadian government were interested in addressing the negative impacts of mining on development it would have implemented the recommendations of the parliamentary report of 2005 and the CSR Roundtables of 2007.”

Planning ahead
The Inter Press Service reports the Sierra Leone Conference on Development and Transformation has drafted a 50-year plan for the West African nation and intends to submit it to the country’s parliament.
“Many of the communiqué’s recommendations for improving the economy differ from the growing push towards increased foreign investment in mining, instead focusing on the long-term benefits of health, education and infrastructure. In fact, it suggests that no new mineral extraction agreements should be made by the government without first conducting a public comprehensive analysis of the quantity and amount of the resources to be exploited.
‘We’ve had a system that was not set up for a rapidly growing economy that would be prosperous, it was a system set up to ensure we have a quite country where resources could be extracted with us saying very little,’ said [the conference’s national coordinator Herbert] McLeod. ‘The exploitation of these resources could continue to have dangerous consequences if they are not managed well. You could have an already unequal society become more unequal as the benefits accrue to only a small section of the population.’ ”

Pot and kettle
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues that for all the Western criticism of China’s activities in Africa, Chinese behaviour is “more or less” the same as that of other major donors.
“All in all, Chinese aid to Africa is going to come with all sorts of strings attached, despite the ‘no-conditionality’ rhetoric, and it is a huge power play, despite the proclamations of ‘south-south co-operation’. There will be problems, but no more or less than with the more traditional donors; just different, on account of different attitudes and modalities.”

Latest Developments, September 19

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Gender inequality
The World Bank’s newly released World Development Report 2012 focuses on gender equality and makes the argument that women’s rights have improved at an “astonishing” rate in recent years but substantial inequalities still persist.
“The main message of this year’s World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development is that these patterns of progress and persistence in gender equality matter, both for development outcomes and policy making. They matter because gender equality is a core development objective in its own right. But greater gender equality is also smart economics, enhancing productivity and improving other development outcomes, including prospects for the next generation and for the quality of societal policies and institutions. Economic development is not enough to shrink all gender disparities—corrective policies that focus on persisting gender gaps are essential.”

World Bank blind spots
ActionAid’s Rachel Moussié argues the latest World Development Report once again reveals the World Bank’s tendency to overemphasize the importance of economic growth while glossing over “key” elements of its own research.
“The World Bank’s faith in the market to pick up the pieces after a crisis is evident in its treatment of social protection, or lack thereof. The report reduces this multi-faceted issue to conditional cash transfers, completely neglecting the important role programmes such as South Africa’s child support grant have played in lifting households and women out of poverty. The bank seemingly fails to recognise that poverty is chronic in the current economic system and the shocks frequent.  Stop-gap measures are just not enough if governments are to prevent these shocks from reversing the gains made on gender equality.”

Eco-imperialism?
Al Jazeera reports environmental rights groups are concerned that Africa risks becoming a lab for lucrative carbon-trading schemes they think will likely only enrich speculators in financial capitals.
“The offsets that come from soil carbon capture schemes have been marketed by world bodies as a means to rechannel money back into climate-friendly agriculture.
However, environmental rights groups say the work of offsetting these emissions – and trading credits associated with the process on carbon markets – is where the big business lies.”

Engineering rights abuses
The Sudan Tribune has picked up on a report by Die Tageszeitung (or Taz) that German investigators are looking into the role that engineering and consulting firm Lahmeyer International may have played in alleged rights abuses surrounding the construction of a Sudan’s Merowe dam project.
“According to Taz, preliminary proceedings like this are rare in Germany, because German public prosecutors and prosecution services do not want to assume responsibility for the behavior of domestic corporations abroad. The judiciary in other states too often allows corporations from the rich north to do whatever they want to.”

Arms and their consequences
An Illinois judge has given the go-ahead to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit alleging that US defense contractor L-3 and a subsidiary assisted in the commission of acts of genocide in the Balkans during the 1990s.
“A lawsuit filed in a Northern Illinois federal court says L-3 and its subsidiary, MPRI (Military Professional Resources Inc.), helped arm and train the Croatians, who killed or displaced 200,000 Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia. The complaint states that, ‘Whether MPRI personnel took part in the genocide is not known and is not alleged here. But what is known definitively is that MPRI provided the means that enabled the genocide to occur.’”

Swiss commodity trading
The Tax Justice Network reports on the release of a new book dealing with Swiss-based trading companies and their role in the global commodities trade.
“Commodities traders often accept far higher risks than oil companies like BP or pure mining companies like BHP Billiton. They also increasingly build their own facilities, often in crisis or even conflict areas. The industry leaders’ increasing openness to risk was recently demonstrated in Libya, where Geneva-based Vitol, with an eye on forming new business relationships, delivered $500 million of fuel to the opposition on credit. And in newly-founded South Sudan, where transparency in the oil business is central for nation building and the peace process, Glencore sealed an obscure deal with the state oil company two days before the official declaration of independence.”

Project-by-project transparency
EarthRights International’s Jonathan Kaufman urges the European Parliament to go beyond existing US extractive industry transparency legislation by requiring companies to publish what they pay to foreign governments on a project-by-project basis.
“Project-level reporting is particularly important to ERI and the groups we work with because it will enable communities to hold governments to account for the resources that are extracted from their own land. It also matters to investors because company payments on various projects within a single country may be associated with different levels of political risk. (Think, for example, about how different it would be to make a large bonus payment to a government for a mining concession in a war-torn part of eastern Congo, as opposed to the peaceful, government-held western part of the country.)”

Voluntary principles
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues the upcoming Busan conference on aid effectiveness should aim for broad new principles that incorporate emerging players who are rapidly changing the world of development finance.
“Voluntary principles are not exactly the most exciting weapons in the international development armoury. Observed as much in their circumvention as in their fulfilment, they are painfully ineffective at creating the kind of rapid improvements most of us want to see. But they are often the best we can do, given the reluctance of powerful entities to submit to binding approaches. And they often set the tone of an era. We recognise the limits of what voluntary principles can achieve, but believe they will help nudge development financers towards better practices.”

Non-communicable diseases
The UN News Centre reports the international body has “launched an all-out attack on non-communicable diseases” with a declaration calling for a multi-faceted strategy to tackle risk factors underlying illnesses that account for nearly two-thirds of all deaths.
“Steps range from price and tax measures to reduce tobacco consumption to curbing the extensive marketing to children, particularly on television, of foods and beverages that are high in saturated fats, trans-fatty acids, sugars, or salt. Other measures seek to cut the harmful consumption of alcohol, promote overall healthy diets and increase physical activity.”

The big picture
New York University’s Alex Evans, frustrated by the perceived lack of human solidarity displayed in UN discussions, quotes former US astronaut Edgar Mitchell on the life-altering experience of seeing the entire planet from afar.
“We have all said over the years, if we could get our political leaders to have a summit meeting in space, life on Earth would be markedly different, because you can’t continue living that way once you have seen the bigger picture.”