London – The Group of 20 leading economies have agreed to provide temporary debt relief to the world’s poorest countries in the wake of the corona pandemic.
During a teleconference meeting held on Wednesday, G-20 finance ministers and central bankers said the moratorium on debt payments would begin on May 1 and last through the end of the year 2020. They also asked private creditors to join them. Continue reading
John McArthur and Krista Rasmussen, Brookings Institute, 30 March 2017: Did the United Nation’s millennium development goals (MDGs) make any difference? Perhaps no question is more important for assessing the results of global policy cooperation between 2000 and 2015. We highlight three key findings: At least 21 million extra lives were saved due to accelerated progress; some successes were more important than others; low income countries accelerated more than middle-income countries.
19 December 2016: Global poverty is increasingly concentrated among a group of 48 countries, which are falling further behind the rest of the world in terms of economic development, according to a United Nations report released on Tuesday by UNCTAD. The Least Developed Countries Report 2016: The Path to Graduation and Beyond – Making the Most of the Process states that a global goal to halve the size of this group will be missed unless the international community takes more action. Continue reading
Tom Murphy, Humanosphere, 7 June 2016: Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa fell to a 15-year low in 2015, and the downward trend is predicted to hold for 2016. It is a troubling trend for the region. With more that half of all Africans projected to be living in cities by 2050, attention is being placed on supporting urban development and getting economic growth back on track. However, some new research provides more evidence that the years of economic growth that preceded the downturn did not necessarily translate to improvements for all Africans. Continue reading
24 September 2015: LDC Watch, the umbrella group for civil society organisations from Least Developed Countries has insisted that the Sustainable Development Goals will not succeed unless there are additional measures to help LDCs. These include an increase in ODI to LDCs, debt cancellation, technology transfer without intellectual property rights, measures to protect against the plunder of LDCs’ natural resources, common but differentied responsibilities and immediate finance to mitigate the effects of climate change. Continue reading
8 June: UNDP and UNAIDS are supporting demands by LDC governments and civil society to extend the TRIPS exemption for medicine, a decision that will be taken today (8 June) at the TRIPS Council Meeting. They say there is an urgent need for the international community to agree to measures to protect the health of people in LDCs
20 May 2015 (IPS) Aimable Twahirwa – Cela fait près de 20 ans que Sylidio Gashirabake, un Hutu, était un auteur dans le génocide au Rwanda. Cela fait également près de 20 ans que son voisin, Augustin Kabogo, un Tutsi, a perdu sa sœur et sa famille dans les violences. Mais aujourd’hui, les deux hommes travaillent côte à côte dans leur entreprise commune dans le district de Kirehe, dans le sud du Rwanda. Continue reading
Richard Jones, (devex) 20 May 2015: A decision taken by EU Ministers is likely to reduce funding commitments to LDCs by setting a target for LDCs at 0.15% of GNI by 2020, rather than binding at the member state level. European governments could drop their aid pledge to developing countries — known as the 0.7 percent aid target — as disagreements between member states ahead of the May 26 Foreign Affairs Council threaten to derail the EU’s historic anti-poverty commitment, Devex has learned. Continue reading
Niaz Asadullah and Zaki Wahhaj East Asia Forum, 6 March 2015: Increasing state control over Grameen Bank will not serve Bangladesh’s best interests and will be detrimental to the nation’s progress on gender equality. Bangladesh has improved its rank in this year’s Global Gender Gap report, moving from 75 in 2013 to 68 in 2014. Much of its progress in improving gender equality over the years is owed to the inclusive model of social development that has seen NGOs working side by side with the state for four decades. Now the government is trying to exert greater control over Grameen.
Diederik Kramers 1 December 2014 (Devex) :Despite strong economic growth, human 
development in the world’s least-developed countries is still lagging and can jeopardize the post-2015 agenda, according to a new report by the U.N Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that urges donors to help LDCs get back on the road to economic transformation by living up to their official development assistance commitments.
“The LDCs are the battleground on which the post-2015 agenda will be won or lost”, David Woodward, UNCTAD senior adviser and and co-author of the study, told Devex. Continue reading
