This article outlines how trade preference programmes can be made more effective for low income countries. It is based on five principles put forward by the Center for Global Development (CGD) to make trade preferences more effective for less-developed countries: expand coverage to all exports from all least developed countries; relax restrictive rules of origin; make trade preference programmes permanent and predictable; promote co-operation between countries giving and receiving preferences; and encourage advanced developing countries to implement trade preference programmes that adopt the other four principles. It argues that extending full duty-free, quota-free market access to all least developed countries would have far more power if it is a project of the G-20, not just the G-8, and Brazil, China, India and Turkey are already showing the way. The author urges the G-20 to show its leadership on global development issues and to realise the Millennium Development Goal of using trade as a tool for development.
Health equity in economic and trade policies
In this letter over 200 scientists, policy experts and others concerned persons are urging the new World Health Organisation Director-General to recognise and address factory farming as a growing public health challenge. The authors suggest that WHO negotiate country-level standards for antibiotic use in animal husbandry, in coordination with the Food and Agricultural Organisation. Member states should be encouraged to articulate specific, verifiable standards for what constitutes legal antibiotic use in animal farms. Further, meat producers should dispose of antibiotics and waste residue properly to prevent environmental contamination and excess greenhouse gas emissions and work with all relevant ministries, including those outside of health, to reduce the size and number of factory farms to better balance dietary need and ecological capacity. WHO should discourage member states from subsidising factory farming and its inputs, which can cause significant harm to the public and consider the application of relevant fiscal policies in member states that would help to reduce meat demand and consumption, especially where consumption exceeds health recommendations. WHO should encourage member states to adopt nutrition standards and implement health education campaigns which inform citizens of the health risks of meat consumption and work closely with ministers of health and agriculture to formulate policies that advocate for a greater proportion of plant-based foods in the diets of member states. Lastly, they recommend that the WHO should consider funding the scientific development of plant-based and other meat alternatives, which have the potential to eliminate or reduce the harms of factory farming.
Over 200 scientists, policy experts and others concerned persons are urging the new World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General to recognise and address factory farming as a growing public health challenge. Just as the WHO has bravely confronted companies that harm human health by peddling tobacco and sugar-sweetened beverages, they argue that it must not waver in advocating for the regulation of industrial animal farming. Total consumption of antibiotics in animal food production is projected to grow by almost 70% between 2010 and 2030. According to the WHO, two of the three most commonly used classes of antibiotics in U.S. animal farming—penicillins and tetracyclines—are of critical importance to humans. Practices such as the constant low dosing of antibiotics and environmental pollution through animal waste make industrial animal farms the perfect breeding ground for antibiotic resistance by allowing transmission into the environment and nearby community. The authors raise other risks of industrial animal farming and call on WHO to strengthen WHO’s Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance to encourage member states of the WHO to ban the use of growth-promoting antibiotics in animal farming, as well as low-dose “disease prevention” antibiotics. Member states should be encouraged to articulate specific, verifiable standards for what constitutes legal antibiotic use in animal farms. Amongst other recommendations they argue that WHO should encourage member states to adopt nutrition standards and implement health education campaigns to inform citizens of the health risks of meat consumption and work closely with ministers of health and agriculture to formulate policies that advocate for a greater proportion of plant-based foods in the diets of member states. Lastly, they recommend that the WHO should consider funding the scientific development of plant-based and other meat alternatives, which have the potential to eliminate or reduce the harms of factory farming.
The author argues that global players that develop greater diplomatic and trade relations with African states will be greatly advantaged. For many countries, particularly those that have framed their relations with Africa largely in humanitarian terms, this is argued to require a shift in public and policy perceptions. Without this shift, many of Africa's traditional partners, especially in Europe and North America, will lose global influence and trade advantages to the emerging powers in Asia, Africa and South America. The author argues that economic fortunes across Africa are diverging, making it less meaningful to treat Africa as a single entity in international economic negotiations. He claims that it is in the global interest that the African Union should be granted a permanent place at the G20 and that in turn, a more focused, sophisticated and strategic African leadership is needed.
The authors assert that the World Bank is a structural driver of the land grabs that is dispossessing and impoverishing rural communities across the globe and a central player that is using its financial and political might to force developing countries to follow a pre-prescribed model of development, based on the neoliberal principles of privatization, deregulation, low corporate taxation and ‘free market’ fundamentalism. At the demand of the G8 in 2012, and with funding from the Gates Foundation, the UK, US, Dutch, and Danish governments, the World Bank is now reported to be developing a new instrument to benchmark the business of agriculture (BBA). Started in late 2013, pilot studies are now underway in 10 countries, to be scaled up to 40 countries in 2014.The BBA builds on the Doing Business model and adapts it to agriculture. Despite a language that claims concerns for small- farmers, the goal of this new agriculture-focused ranking system is argued to aim at further opening countries’ agricultural sectors to foreign corporations. CODESRIA report the launch of a campaign to stop the Doing Business ranking. This is the ask of the OUR LAND, OUR BUSINESS campaign.
Over 80% of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Covid-19 loans recommend that poor countries hit hard by the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic adopt tough new austerity measures in the aftermath of the health crisis. Since the pandemic was declared in March, 76 out of 91 IMF loans – 84% – negotiated with 81 countries push for belt-tightening that could result in deep cuts to public healthcare systems and social protection. Government failure to tackle inequality ―through support for public services, workers’ rights and a fair tax system― left them woefully ill-equipped to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors argue that the IMF has contributed to these failures by consistently pushing a policy agenda that seeks to balance national budgets through cuts to public services, increases in taxes paid by the poorest, and moves to undermine labour rights and protections. As a result, when Covid-19 hit, only one in three countries, covering less than a third of the global workforce, had safety nets for workers to fall back on if they lost their job or became sick. The analysis also found that just 8 out of 71 World Bank health emergency response projects approved between April and end of June this year aim to eliminate healthcare fees, which are prohibitive in at least 56 of these countries.
The European Union's new external trade plans presented by Peter Mandelson in Brussels will pose a serious threat to poor countries' development if implemented, said international agency Oxfam. The EU is pushing an aggressive liberalisation agenda in developing countries and trying to impose rules on competition, investment and government procurement that won't help development.Demands for stronger intellectual property rules and enforcement, which threaten to limit access to vital medicines for people in developing countries as well as depriving farmers of the right to ownership of seeds.
Oxfam welcomes the German cabinet’s announcement that it will use its G8 presidency in 2007 to continue the fight against poverty in Africa. Under Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership, the cabinet released an ambitious agenda to focus the world’s wealthiest nations on delivering plans that work for the world’s poor. 'Within a generation, for the first time in history, every child in the world could be in school, every woman could give birth with proper health care, everyone could drink clean, safe water, and millions of new health workers and teachers could be saving lives and shaping minds. We should accept nothing less from the G8 leaders than concrete plans towards these goals,' said Kalinski.
This publication affirms the World Health Organization's commitment to continue to work with member states and relevant regional economic integration organisations on the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework for the Sharing of Influenza Viruses and Access to Vaccines and Other Benefits. It guarantees to convene the Open-Ended Working Group before the 128th session of the Executive Board and to undertake any necessary technical consultations and studies to support the work of the Open-Ended Working Group in reaching a final agreement.
In 2007, world attention was focused on the World Health Organization (WHO) when claims emerged that WHO’s Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN) was unfair to the interests and needs of developing countries. According to this book, GISN has failed to deliver fair and equitable benefit-sharing with regard to vaccines, anti-virals and other technologies by not ensuring these products were available at affordable prices to developing countries that were most affected by the influenza outbreak. At the same time, developed countries profited from the virus sharing system by, for example, having timely access to vaccines and making intellectual property (IP) rights claims over shared biological materials and products developed using such materials. Developing countries thus potentially face astronomical bills for the purchase of vaccines and other medical supplies, as well as difficulties in accessing such supplies, due to their limited availability. Latest technologies were also protected by IP rights, creating more obstacles for developing countries that might seek to build their own production capacity. This book provides an in-depth understanding of the background to, and rationale for, the current WHO negotiations on influenza virus and benefit sharing, as well as a front-line view of the negotiations.