Development Watch | News . Analysis . Comments

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Richard Johnson)

Whereas poverty and rampant corruption stand in the way of healthcare facilities in most of the developing lands, ageing population in Western Europe is posing a serious challenge to levels which presently make countries of the region outshine, says a new report.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Daniela Estrada)

The movement for tribal peoples, Survival International, has raised the alarm that an outbreak of respiratory disease has struck one of the Amazon's last nomadic tribes – whose numbers have already been decimated by flu and malaria.

Some 35 Nukak-Maku, including nine children, have been admitted to San José del Guaviare hospital in the southern Colombian Amazon, Survival said in a media release on June 23, adding that health advisor Héctor Muñoz had told Colombian radio that the hospital was well over capacity, leaving some Nukak with only make-shift beds.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Jerome Mwanda)

The United Nations has taken the wind out of the sails of world's rich countries that never tire of complaining about the citizens of developing lands burdening their rather stressed economies, by pointing out that about 80 per cent of refugees around the world live in poor countries.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Ramesh Jaura)

Leaders of three eminent international institutions have underlined the critical role of smallholder farmers in achieving much-needed global food security and preventing food price volatility. The clarion call comes in run-up to the first-ever official meeting of agriculture ministers from the world's 20 major industrial and emerging economies, and ahead of Rio+20.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Jerome Mwanda) - A new global research project has come up with an upbeat message that sounds like a truism: "Progress in African development happens best when it is led by African states and citizens". This message emerges from industrious research by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

ODI's report 'Mapping Progress' identifies the crucial role of effective leadership, smart policies, proper institutional foundations and international partnerships in driving development and calls for a new outlook on development.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Johannes Reichert) - While the prospect of halving poverty by 2015 as proclaimed by the United Nations at the turn of the millennium looks bleak, yet another UN conference has resolved to halve to 24 the number of world's poorest and most vulnerable nations -- known as the least developed countries (LDCs) -- by 2021.

In order to enable least developed countries -- many of them in sub-Saharan Africa -- to move out of LDC category, the conference resolved to work out a smooth process of transitioning when countries attain the required social development benchmarks.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Johannes Reichert) - If the fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (UNLDC IV) "does not look promising at all," as former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, pointed out bluntly ahead of the gathering concluding on May 13, it is because the root causes of the problems of the world's poorest are not being tackled.

Instead of curing root causes of poverty and hunger that plague LDCs, the focus is on curing symptoms. Poverty and hunger are related to each other and to environmental degradation. This is underlined by the fact LDCs are primarily agricultural economies with nearly 70 percent of the population engaged in agriculture. But productivity of LDC agriculture is relatively low. Land degradation is a major problem, due to increasing population pressure, erosion, water scarcity and the breakdown of traditional systems for soil fertility.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By J. Brian Atwood*) - Spreading demand for change in the Middle East and North Africa has Western governments scrambling to calculate appropriate diplomatic responses. As happened when Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union yielded to democratic forces, there will soon be demand from new and/or reforming governments for cooperation in political and economic institution building. Donor nations must be ready to respond.

Video of street demonstrations from Morocco to Yemen accurately emphasize the desire for freedom from authoritarian rule. It is also the failure of Middle Eastern economies to produce professional livelihoods that propels the youth of these nations to revolution. Paradoxically, the tool they are using to organize dissent is also their window to the future, the new technology of the information age.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Ernest Corea) - On March 3 and 4, a group of teenagers and pre-teens in Springfield, a nearby suburb, underwent what was called a "30-hour famine". They fasted for 30 consecutive hours, breaking only occasionally for sips of water as nourishment.

They also participated in activities that required physical effort, just as the poor in food insecure countries would, even when enduring the pangs of hunger. To sharpen their awareness of how some of the very poor are forced to live, they created a small pool of polluted water, by placing mud in a sock, pouring water into the sock, and then squeezing the water out into a mini-pool; presumably the imagined "village centre" for washing and drinking.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By Ernest Corea) - Finance Ministers and Central Bankers of the Group of 20 (G20) -- the world's top economic performers -- who met on February 18-19 in Paris, took a low-keyed approach to a potential world food crisis that was the subject of much analysis and agitated comment on the eve of the meeting.

Some commentators even assumed that the main purpose of the ministerial meeting was to discuss what could be an impending food crisis, and work out counter-measures. This was not to be.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH) - Though hardly known beyond a circle of experts, the right to development is a human right enshrined in a United Nations declaration. As the world body starts commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Declaration, UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay has expressed the hope that it would draw wider public attention, particularly in the wake of popular uprisings in North Africa and the Gulf region.

Addressing a symposium in Berlin on February 24, 2011, Pillay called on governments and all concerned to seize the opportunity of the 25th anniversary to move beyond political debates and focus on practical steps to implement the Declaration that was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 4, 1986.

(DEVELOPMENT WATCH | By J Chandler) - Better late than never: Following this axiom, the UN Security Council which normally debates country-specific and war-and-peace issues such as Sudan and the Middle East, decided to widen its horizon and discussed in a high-level session some of the root causes underlying conflicts around the world.

In proposing the debate on 'Interlinkages between Peace, Security and Development,' Brazil made clear that it was not seeking to have the Council take on the specific responsibilities of other principal organs of the United Nations, such as the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on development issues.