Full Coverage: Development

30.01.2004

Indian children study

A project aimed at improving living conditions in rural India has shown tremendous success: ten years ago only 25% of children were enrolled in school, today the figure is nudging 100% and health care has improved sharply. The key: educating and empowering community members.

30.01.2004 Le Centre canadien d’étude et de coopération internationale (CECI) avec la collaboration du Carrefour international de la presse universitaire francophone (CIPUF) invite le public et les médias à deux causeries midi lors desquelles seront présentées les conclusions des débats tenus au Forum social mondial qui a eu lieu en Inde du 16 au 21 janvier dernier. Ces activités s’inscrivent dans le cadre de la Semaine du développement international et porteront sur les divers enjeux débattus lors de ce Forum d’envergure internationale et sur les engagements des groupes québécois en développement économique alternatif.

30.01.2004 Student volunteers are back from Nicaragua, where they spent two weeks harvesting coffee and learning about the crisis facing small growers and the promise of fair trade. Another group returned recently from Cuba, where they studied sustainable agriculture. Read what they learned.

30.01.2004 The U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is the first subregional trade agreement of its kind. Trade between the U.S. and Central America is about $13.4 billion per year. 1 The U.S. is the region's most important trading partner, about 40-50% of Central American exports go to the United States . CAFTA would be the first agreement between such highly asymmetric trading partners.

30.01.2004 Para o economista cubano Osvaldo Martínez, a Área de Livre Comércio das Américas (Alca) dita light é apenas a mudança do formato e dos procedimentos de um plano do governo estadunidense de controlar a América Latina e Caribe - e por isso precisa ser combatida.

30.01.2004 The World Bank will dole out billions of dollars of reconstruction funds for Iraq pledged by donors, the institution announced Thursday, based on a joint UN-Bank needs assessment undertaken in the fall. The strategy is to improve governance and capacity, meet emergency needs, and provide policy advice for building a market economy.

30.01.2004 O presidente Lula da Silva participou sexta-feira, em Genebra, de um encontro com o presidente francês Jacques Chirac e o secretário-geral da ONU, Kofi Annan, destinado a discutir a criação de uma maneira de combater a fome no mundo, através de impostos financeiros. No mesmo dia, Lula tentaria dar uma mãozinha na candidatura da cidade do Rio para a organização dos Jogos Olímpicos de 2012, fazendo uma visita ao Comitê Olímpico Internacional, em Lausanne.

30.01.2004 Another battle is heating up between an indigenous community in Ecuador and a U.S. oil firm, warns Amazon Watch. By Feb. 1 Ecuadorian troops are expected to muscle their way into the town of Sarayacu on behalf of a consortium of oil firms, including Texas-based Burlington Resources. Background.

29.01.2004 If only males can go to school and inherit land, how can girls overcome poverty? A new book, Land and Schooling: Differences Between Sons and Daughters explores land inheritance and schooling across generations in three countries: the Philippines, Indonesia and Ghana and discusses how gender imbalances can be righted.

29.01.2004 Defenders of human rights in India are launching a campaign to press for the arrest of the killers of two social activists who were shot dead, allegedly for taking on members of a powerful land mafia, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar last week.

29.01.2004 Pakistan will focus development work on the MDGs with a $411 million faciiity granted by a consortium of 4 United Nations agencies under their Country Programme Action Plans for a five year period through to 2008.

29.01.2004 Pakistan will begin development work with a $411 million aid from various United Nations agencies under the Country Programme Action Plans for a five year period.

27.01.2004 In Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua agriculture remains the largest source of employment, engaging 52.5, 43.9 and 43.2 percent of the economically active population respectively. In the U.S., only 2% of the labor force is employed in the rural sector.

27.01.2004 Sur la base des informations obtenues, Oxfam a élaboré un programme d'urgence axé sur l'eau et l'assainissement. Ce programme vise la protection, l'amélioration de la santé et le bien-être de 18,000 personnes dans vingt quartiers sinistrés.

27.01.2004 What business entrepreneurs are to the economy, social entrepreneurs are to social change. They are, writes David Bornstein in his new book How to Change the World, the driven, creative individuals who question the status quo, exploit new opportunities, refuse to give up, and remake the world for the better.

27.01.2004 Conflict among three tribal groups in Nigeria's Delta State--the cause of hundreds of deaths this year alone--is not about ethnic strife, but rather access to political patronage that provides opportunities to skim profits from lucrative oil operations, says a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday, offering suggestions for stemming the violence.

26.01.2004 Some 60,000 Pakistani women are receiving small amounts of credit, banking services, and training for poor women from the Kashf Foundation, using the model of the highly successful Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. In just a few years, 90 percent of the women have experienced gains, and 30% have crossed the poverty line.

26.01.2004

Pakistani women at workshop

Some 60,000 Pakistani women are receiving small amounts of credit, banking services, and training for poor women from the Kashf Foundation, using the model of the highly successful Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. In just a few years, 90 percent of the women have experienced gains, and 30% have crossed the poverty line.

26.01.2004 El Salvador’s former guerrilla movement, the FMLN, is making inroads in its struggle to win political power at the ballot box. In an interview with LatinAmerica Press, an FMLN leader describes how they would change the national development strategy if elected March 21.

26.01.2004 A Jan. 7 cyclone nearly wiped out the smallest of all island states, Niue, located in the South Pacific. Today Niue joins 300 other small island nations in a meeting to discuss defenses against the encroachments of global warming, forecast by experts to submerge some islands and batter others. See a new report by the Earth Policy Institute.