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G8 helps itself on tax dodging as rest of the world loses out

soren.ambrose — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:23:34 +0000

That’s all folks! This year’s G8 summit has just finished in Northern Ireland.

As often happens, major world events eclipsed the planned agenda to some extent – in this case Syria. Here’s hoping that the ‘very frank’ discussions among the leaders will lead to an agreement that removes obstacles to a cease fire.

But there’s also news from the official summit agenda, which was topped by tax.

We’ve been working hard to push the G8 to make real reforms to the tax system. And we’ve had, I think, partial success

Between the communiqué just issued and the statements made on Saturday at the “Open for Growth” conference in London, it’s clear that the world leaders know that they have to clamp down on the scandal of tax dodging.

The revelations about the breadth and depth of the misdirection of funds going on won’t stop, and governments can’t afford to keep looking both bamboozled and incapable of stopping the scams.

On Saturday, all ten tax havens controlled by the UK – including Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Jersey – announced that they will comply with the UK government’s strong request that they commit to assemble registries of who owns the companies doing business in their jurisdictions and provide information on how much tax they’re paying.

Sunny islands, shady deals

These sunny UK islands – which are also quite shady, as activists in London pointed out when they created a new tax haven on the Thames in advance of the summit – are the best-known tax havens, so this is a very welcome move that puts pressure on others like Mauritius, Nauru, and even those jurisdictions like the U.S. state of Delaware, which offers extreme privacy and low tax rates.

Today the G8 heads of government committed to take steps down the same road. Six of them have submitted plans to create registries of beneficial ownership. And there are plans for automatic exchange of information as the new standard among government tax authorities.

But crucially, the G8 failed to provide two things: details on how they’re going to get the non-UK tax havens to sign up to this agreement and solid provisions for how they’re going to include developing countries in the arrangements.

The G8 has talked a good game on tax dodging, and there has certainly been a breakthrough in the leaders’ recognition of its impact on developing countries

It’s good to see that our campaign on the damage done by tax havens has at least pushed rich countries to start helping themselves with systematic collection and sharing of information.

But actions speak louder than words. We had high hopes that this G8 Summit would deliver significant reforms to the broken tax system that assist poor just as much as rich countries.

Developing countries lose billions of dollars in vital revenues to tax dodging every year. But instead of making sure that they can hold on to this badly needed revenue, the G8 has helped itself and left the rest of the world without the rapid advance it needs.

G8 summit 2014

It’s not clear if these issues will be back on the G8 agenda again next year when the summit moves to Germany. But even if the topic gets dropped, there are other ways to keep the pressure on.

The G20 – which is the more natural home for these discussions – meets in September in Russia, and should discuss a report on tax dodging, which it commissioned.

We will be pressing them to go beyond their usual research-and-deliberation mode to put some teeth into the commitments they made in 2009 to go after tax havens.

We’ll take similar steps at the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union, and anywhere else that has influence on global tax rules.

This is all part of our tax campaign, which will launch in a few weeks time.

With activists around the world joining our cause, we will spare no effort to show the tax dodgers that we’ve got them surrounded. The bright lights aren’t going to be turned off so they can go and hide in their corners.

The rules are being re-written at local, national, regional, and global levels. We will be ensuring that countries get the revenues that are rightfully theirs, so they can develop in responsible and accountable ways.

Tax dodging and global poverty: what the G8 must deliver

melanie.ward — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:33:35 +0000

Over the next two days leaders of the G8, the world’s eight richest countries, will meet to discuss reforming the global tax system. Over these 48 hours, developing countries will lose £1.4 billion to tax dodging. I’m in Northern Ireland with some of my ActionAid colleagues including Pamela Chisanga, Director of ActionAid Zambia, to try to impact on the last minute negotiations.

We have worked hard to influence the agenda of this G8 meeting. Eighteen months ago we began pushing for tax justice to be an area that leaders should prioritise for action. We are pleased to have had a real impact so far, with the UK Prime Minister making action on tax dodging and “developing countries to prosper” a top priority, alongside other issues like transparency, trade and the terrible crisis in Syria.

Over 200 UK anti-poverty organisations have been working together as the Enough Food for Everyone If campaign to highlight the fact that poor countries lose three times more to tax havens that they receive in aid every year – vital funds that should be spent on public services like schools, hospitals and roads and not siphoned into the offshore accounts of huge companies.

This morning Pamela took this message to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, chair of this year’s G8 Summit. She told him that she was worried that the G8 Leaders are going to agree a deal on tax dodging that shuts out developing countries. Pamela talked about Caroline Muchanga, a market trader in Zambia, who earns just $4 on a good day and sometimes cannot afford to feed her children. But Caroline pays more tax than the British multinational food company based next door to her stall – the very definition of injustice. Pamela asked David Cameron to ensure that she could take a message back to Caroline after the G8 that things were going to change.

Pamela is worried about the outcome of the G8 for very good reason. To defeat tax dodging and shut down tax havens, there is a mountain to climb. But the hard work would be more than worth it if we can get there because of the transformative effect that it would have on developing country finances.

This mountain will not be scaled by the G8 in the next two days but there is the possibility that we can advance into the foothills. Until recently, leaders of rich nations like those of the G8 were all too happy to turn a blind eye to tax dodging. Only with pressure from campaigners, and when their own countries were hit by the economic crisis, did they begin to take notice of a problem that had been staring them in the face all along – one that hurts rich and poor countries alike.

Countries like the UK shoulder a large burden for the existence of tax havens, which are the life support system for tax dodging. The UK is responsible for 1 in 5 of the world’s tax havens in the form of the Crown Dependencies like Jersey and Guernsey, and the Overseas Territories like the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. The UK has legal and constitutional powers over these places. The good news is that on Saturday at a pre-G8 summit all 10 of them agreed to join an existing multilateral agreement to share tax information; an agreement which some developing countries are part of. This represented a step forward on tax justice: a first step up the mountain, if you like.

In the next 48 hours at the G8 we may or may not get progress in 3 areas:

A ‘gold standard’ agreement on automatically sharing tax information that is vital for tracking down tax dodgers. There is a serious risk that this will be between rich countries and tax havens, and will shut poor countries out in the cold.
Agreement to hold central registers of the true ‘beneficial’ owners of shell companies – more crucial information in the battle against tax dodging. The danger is that these registers will be privately held and not publicly available. You can’t advance tax transparency with secret lists and again, there is a risk that developing countries will be unable to access this data.
Progress towards making multinational companies report the profits they make and the taxes they pay on a country-by-country basis, rather than as one consolidated global figure. Making this information publicly available and not kept secret between companies and tax authorities is essential.

Ambitious agreements to act in each of these areas would signal a real advance from the G8 into the foothills of that tax justice mountain. But to stumble and fall because it is all too difficult would be a massive let down to Caroline Muchanga in Zambia and the millions of hard-working people just like her across the world.

As Pamela Chisanga told David Cameron: in the next two days the G8 must not turn their backs on the world’s poorest people.

Let Children be Children

soren.bjerregaard — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 05:19:35 +0000

Today ActionAid Kenya is celebrating that Sunday was the International Day of the African Child. We use the day to remind our self and the people we work with, that we have to end the social practices that harm children. We celebrate on school to mark the continuing need for improvement of education to African Children.

The day is marked several places across Kenya. At Nyarongi Primary School in Western Kenya, we celebrate children’s right to be children. We focus on the importance of involving children in their own issues. Children develop through their imagination and by exploring the world around them.

ActionAid works to unfold the potential of children as change makers. Youth, affected by poverty and marginalization, are leaders in their own right with the potential to influence their peers and shape their future. We work to build movements of young people with capacity to articulate and demand their rights. We raise children’s awareness of human rights and their ability to fight poverty and injustice.

Long distances to school, insecurity, curriculum irrelevant children’s need, early marriages, cultural beliefs, attitudes, and practices have hampered achievement of the right to education. Significant weaknesses in the management of the sector at national level including corruption have compromised effective deployment of resources.

The event at Nyarongi Primary will also be used to highlight widespread Violence against children, domestic violence against women, the rise in child neglect cases, disinheritance of orphans, high drop out of children in schools and limited children participation in decision-making structures. The event includes speeches, a procession walk, and an Award of Gallant Child Rights champions. CARD, Life for Children Ministries, Plan International, CEPAD, are among the other participants.

Follow the event on twitter via #africanchildday

Climate change talks return to Bonn

Jessica.Falerio — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:06:03 +0000

After a four year absence, I’m back at the UNFCCC climate talks, although this time it’s the mid-year meetings in Bonn rather than the end of year summit.

This is where deals are made and broken and new deals are formed before countries head back to the negotiating table just before Christmas.

It’s only the first week but the climate conference in Warsaw is already shaping up to be a potentially intriguing experience.

What gladdens my heart is seeing how much space has opened up in the negotiations, compared to four years ago

Government delegations are catching civil society representatives in corridors between meetings and workshops, requesting meetings to know their positions. Added to this, civil society is actually highly organised, mobilised and being strategic in their engagement on the issues.

Two items of great interest on my agenda for this week are Adaptation and Loss and Damage.

Loss and Damage

On Loss and Damage, the lead negotiator from the G77 and China group met with civil society and requested we keep the doors open as negotiations went forward.

We would like to see an international mechanism for Loss and Damage, in line with the Doha Decision from the last climate conference in Qatar.

A group of NGOs including ActionAid organised a civil society brainstorm on Loss and Damage in an attempt to start to discuss what kind of mechanism for loss and damage could be built using existing frameworks.

Adaptation

On Adaptation, the main concern is the lack of funds in the Adaptation fund and the empty Green Climate Fund, along with talk that the fund might be filled with official development assistance, which is the economic assistance that donor governments pledge to developing countries.

The largest setback of the conference is the stalling of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) which is responsible for moving forward with the implementation of work on adaptation and loss and damage, amongst other things.

There is a disagreement between the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus and until some form of agreement is reached, the SBI will not be able to proceed with its work

However, this hasn’t stopped various country groups and delegations from meeting with others to find out their proposals, and break-out meeting rooms and even shady corners with sofas have been filled to the brim with side discussions while everyone waits for the chairman to get the SBI process on track again.

What does all of this mean for ActionAid and our work with the poorest communities? Well I’m glad you asked!

I’m here to understand the debates and identify the main areas of research where we can add value to the discussion. These include loss and damage, adaptation, agriculture and smallholder women farmers, national adaptation plans development processes.

Some of the discussions happening here will have a huge bearing on funding and funding mechanisms that will or won’t support the most vulnerable on the ground at risk of climate-induced disasters.

My time here is also helping me to connect programme and policy work in a way that I can share with country programmes with the goal of strengthening ActionAid’s in-country work.

Tax at the G8 – a rich country stitch up?

soren.ambrose — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:23:06 +0000

Reports of the G8’s death were premature. It’s alive and kicking, and might even do some good on one key economic issue this year – tax.

This may come as a surprise since so many observers wrote off the grouping of the seven leading industrial countries – US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, with Russia thrown in to make 8 – after the global financial crisis elevated the G20 to the top of global economic decision-making.

Since the G20 leaders started meeting in 2008, the G8 has continued its annual summits, usually with a big donor initiative as a centrepiece – agriculture in Italy in 2009, maternal health in Canada in 2010. But this year, the UK is hosting, and has made a bid to return the G8 to economic relevance by seeking landmark agreements on a controversial global issue: tax dodging and financial secrecy.

In this new era of global power dynamics, the rules are being re-written

If a country is bold enough to suggest taking an issue that has been claimed by the G20 into a different forum and coming up with new agreement, well, no-one is going to stop them.

Talking tax

This year, the big donor initiative is still there – the UK hosted a high-profile pre-summit meeting last Saturday, at which pledges for $4.1 billion in new funding for nutrition were made.

But the excitement is all about tax. David Cameron, UK Prime Minister, has been driving for an agreement on requiring public registries of “beneficial ownership” of companies. In the swelter of corporate holding companies, shell companies, tax havens, and proliferating subsidiaries, it has become commonplace for companies to store their funds in accounts that can’t be easily recognised or traced.

Although corporations maintain that they set up all these entities for a variety of reasons, one undeniable result is that less tax is being paid, especially to the developing countries that are often the source of the raw materials used in international trade.

When they use tax havens, like Switzerland or Mauritius or the British Virgin Islands, their secrecy rules make it nearly impossible to get answers

The OECD estimates that poor countries lose an amount to tax havens that is three times what they receive in aid each year.

To begin to untangle it all, we need these entities to answer what should be a relatively simple question: who are you? That’s what a public registry of beneficial ownership would provide. And then we need to find out: where’s the money, and what tax have you paid? That’s where the other big issue on the table at the G8 comes in: requiring automatic exchange of information between governments on tax payments. And again, the main problem is with the tax havens.

What can the G8 do?

The G8, acting together, can put effective pressure on these small jurisdictions to conform to strong international standards. Indeed, the G8 countries actually control a fair number of the havens, such as the British overseas territories!

That muscle is why this moment is important:

It’s a good bet that the G8 won’t take up this issue again after this year, so this is the opportunity.

This week will see the highest pressure yet on the tax dodgers, and it’s become a high stakes game, where we really don’t know what the outcome will be. While the UK government seems to be holding firm, a range of other G8 members – Russia, Canada, the US, Germany, Japan – are all cited as potential blockers to a strong collective declaration that will signal the beginning of the end for the industrial-scale tax dodging that tax havens make possible.

So we are bracing for some sort of compromise. We are most concerned about those that would maintain confidentiality of any new registries or exclude developing countries from the benefits of information exchange.

The G8 would justify the second option by saying that poorer countries can’t be relied on to handle so much information, or even understand it. They might say they’re committed to expanding the deal to include them in due course.

None of that will be good enough. ActionAid and other civil society groups will blow the whistle on any deal that is a stitch-up among rich countries and tax havens.

But a few days before the summit, we are hopeful that public pressure, which has reached fever pitch with the recent exposés of tax dodging by big companies like Starbucks and Apple, and our own exposés of funds lost to companies like ABF in Zambia and SAB Miller in Ghana, will mean that the G8 heads of state dare not emerge from their deliberations with anything less than a deal that sets the world on a course to genuine tax justice for all.

Consultation Meeting for the Implementation of Village Action Plans: LRP 1

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:36:16 +0000

BY Luke Miller

This event, organised by ActionAid Myanmar with its partner Action for Social Aid, provided the opportunity for representatives of LRP 1’s thirty villages to meet and discuss the action plans that they have been developing. The village representatives included fellows, village leaders and the heads of the villages’ CBOs, all of whom would have played a part in discussing their key action plan requirements within their respective communities.

The three key purposes of the meeting were to:

Discuss the budget available in 2013 to contribute to the villages’ action plan implementation
Provide further information and technical support needed for village leaders to pursue the proper implementation of their action plans
Prepare for a township level presentation, with a compiled analysis of all LRP villages, which will assemble a plan and budget for the coming years

After introductions from ActionAid staff and other NGO representatives present, as well as introductions from each village team, the first item on the agenda was for the villages to present their action plans. Each village’s priorities varied quite considerably in their nature and cost, showing how every village’s situation was different and highlighting the importance of a bottom-up planning process in deciding the projects to be implemented in individual communities. Proposed action plan activities included:

A new cyclone-resistant community centre
Fencing around existing schools
The building of bridges and jetties across rivers
The renovation and building of new main streets
The building of a community clinic
Setting up a micro-finance system
Funding for schools
The building and stocking of a new library
Construction of road links between villages to enhance the accessibility of resources and services only available in certain villages
Providing access to electricity in two villages

The costs of each project were notably varied, as well as the amount that the villages were able to contribute to the total. Some of the expected costs of these propositions heavily exceeded the LRP 1 budget of around 10 lakh per village, with the provision of electricity access to one village, for example, projected to cost 250 lakh. In these cases it is hoped that projects will not simply be abandoned, but that village leaders will be encouraged to seek other sources of funding, for example from the local government, and consider extending the proposed time-frame of their action points.

Once the individual presentations were made, an opportunity was provided for suggestions regarding the plans, with NGO representatives and village leaders detailing their experiences with particular projects in the past. This meant that villages were able to consider possible adjustments to their action points in light of new information, for example with one village that had not fully considered the costs of staffing a community clinic once it had been built. Village leaders also expressed the importance of NGOs like ActionAid’s support in securing government funding – without support, villages find the application process of contacting the relative government department for their project much harder. It was also raised that villages should aim to collaborate more with projects in order to spread the costs, for example in cases where the building of a bridge by one village will provide benefits for another nearby village.

Khaing Zar Lin from ActionAid and Ko Ye from ASA then outlined the budget allocation for each village, explaining that ActionAid would be able to fund 70% of each project, but with a maximum spend on each village set at 10 lakh. While many village representatives noted how many of their projects exceeded the amount ActionAid could provide, it was explained that it was crucial that villages tried to find other sources of funding and also sought to contribute as much as possible from within the community.

The afternoon session of the meeting was dedicated to visits from government officials from four departments: health, irrigation, education and administration. Each official explained the latest local information relative to each of their departments, with the representative from the administration department also outlining how villages without government-approved status could seek government recognition. This process is complicated for villages without this recognition, so some support in this situation may be required. Village leaders were also able to direct questions to each representative, which was especially successful with the education department official as he was pressed on a range of issues by a number of people wanting questions answered.

The final part of the event was where villages were able to make final selections on the priorities in their action plans as well as alterations if required. Details on the basic information needed for the proposal development as well as fund disbursement was oriented and commonly agreed, while a plan of work was set out for the coming months.

Happy ending of the day has been brought about by Ko Ye’s return from township meeting of budget allocation for poverty alleviation and rural development scheme, organized in the same afternoon at Administration Office, where he successfully presented and was granted partial contribution for the prioritized action plan of 4 villages; 41 lakh for Poe Su Chaung village’s bridge construction, 5 lakh for Nan San village’s drinking water pond, 10 or 20 lakh for Aye Kone village’s drinking water pond, and 10 lakh plus support of Information and Public Relation department for Hti Tan Yin village’s library. Everyone is excited, motivated, and proud for the success that we deserve from a year long Village Book process of community analysis and action plan. Yes! We did that. Our proactive engagement has been taken in account NOW by the local government body.... breaking the culture of silent...

Workshop on the Capacity Enhancement of Civil Servants

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:57:04 +0000

By Luke Miller

This workshop, held on the 6th June, was organised by the Township General Administration Department of Pyapon, with the support of ActionAid Myanmar. It brought together Pyapon’s local government officials and Ward/Village tract administrative staffs, as well as representatives of ActionAid and partner organizations working in Pyapon. 81 people attended in total, with the majority of the day taken up by talks from representatives of various government departments. The afternoon gave a chance for group discussions to formulate recommendations for the development of a training manual on Strengthening Local Governance: Capacity Enhancement of Civil Servants.

The workshop was opened by the Township Officer of the Administration Department, who gave a presentation on local governance.

He explained how he hopes Myanmar’s period of transition leads to a more people-focused approach, with good levels of democracy and transparency at all government levels. The focus of the government, he outlined, is to shift the emphasis from a top-down to bottom-up approach.

The presentation highlighted his desire for inclusiveness to ensure that everyone got their say in the decision-making process and he criticised an attitude of strict hierarchy within government that led to many not being able to voice their opinions. He stated that there will be a lot of support for the elimination of poverty, with education and healthcare two key areas where the government needs to, and will, focus. The second speaker, from the National Planning Department, built on the subject of bottom-up governance, but warned that bottom-up planning needs to be practical, with some requiring a change of attitude; local leaders cannot just wait for instructions from the top.

A speaker from the Land Registration Department explained how you do not have an excuse if you do not understand the new 2012 Land Law, so he advocated education on the changes in the law.

The extension of privately-owned land in 2012 gives more people the incentive to increase productivity when farming; under indirect ownership, this stimulus wasn’t there, he argued. Highlighting the need for regional food security, the representative suggested that the government should provide advice on the right types of crop for different areas.

Land registration activities started in January 2013 and are a positive step, however it is a complicated procedure and his talk gave examples of the large number of disputes over who is entitled to which plots of land. It seems that more support and guidance is needed in order to smooth the process of land registration in Pyapon.

The Township Education Officer spoke next and praised free primary school education with the aid of UNICEF.She outlined initiatives such as a scholarship programme for the most able students, a new initiative to promote practical life skills to students and an increase in education on democratic processes.

Schools in the area are encouraged to facilitate active student participation in the decision-making process, she explained, with democracy active within schools through student councils and Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs).

She also praised the extension of informal education for children aged between 10 and 14, to ensure that even those outside of formal schooling can at least receive basic education.

The first speech from the township officer of the administration department touched upon the benefits of micro-finance and this was built upon in a speech by a representative of the Agriculture Development Bank. This government-run scheme provides low-interest, simple loans for farmers, ranging from short-term and seasonal loans to longer term loans designed for quality investment. In the Pyapon area alone, the bank has provided loans to over 9,300 individuals and heads of households can also open a savings account with the bank. While the representative praised the effects of the loans, they also raised concern at how bad crop yields had led to many loans not being paid back, with the bank struggling for funding to maintain the level of loans it has been handing out. They emphasised that credit checks were an important aspect of the system that needed to be improved; it is unsustainable for a bank to be providing reasonably sized loans to people who cannot afford to pay them back within the specified time period.

There were also speeches from representatives of the Department of Fisheries, the Forestry Department and the Department of Agriculture. The representative from the Department of Agriculture importantly highlighted that while the bottom-up process was positive, people should be wary of changing too fast. Individuals are not used to the bottom-up process in all cases and although self-reliance is good, people need to be “picked up” to a position where they are able to be self-reliant.

The final part of the workshop was focused on a number of group sessions, giving the representatives of various departments and levels of expertise the chance to share their ideas. The group session came up with a number of key conclusions and recommendations for the manual’s development, including:

A promotion of active participation in communities
Addressing the weak levels of accountability with policies
Improving the relationship between governments and third parties such as NGOs and CBOs
An improvement in relationships between government staff; more of a chance for government officials to communicate with their superiors
An increase in access to the media for local government
An improvement in the awareness of community members of their role in working positively with the government
Lower local government staff should be empowered to be able to implement government policie

The workshop was extremely positive in promoting the opportunity for government officials to work together with NGOs. However, as was pointed out at the end, the discussion of ideas on change in local government and communities is the easy part of the process. The harder part is what now follows; ensuring that local government policy is effectively implemented to the right people, with the support of the community and third parties involved in the process. Despite the challenges, there is a high amount of optimism within the government staff, with one simply stating at the end: “Myanmar can do this”.

YGL: "It’s incredible to see the energy, curiosity and passion of the youth"

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 04:11:10 +0000

By Medea Savary, Training and Communication Officer, Global Platform Myanmar

On 4 June a group of Young Global Leaders visited ActionAid Myanmar to learn about our work and meet Fellows, Activista members and participants of the Youth Participation in Governance training conducted by Global Platform Myanmar. It was a unique opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues affecting Myanmar’s youth, share about youth activism and leadership and exchange ideas and advice on strategies for success.

Here is what some of the Young Global Leaders thought about the meeting:

Soulaima Gourani, Lecturer, Corporate Counselor, Author and CEO of Soulaima Gourani, Denmark. www.soulaima.com

“It is ok for people to come to Myanmar with social, economical even human rights interests but I would like them to respect the local will and not to change the soul of this country”

Vannarith Chheang, Educator, Researcher and Analyst. Cambodia. www.vannarithchheang.wordpress.com

“The only option to engage with decision makers is the international pressure. Myanmar must take advantage of its role as a hosting country for the next ASEAN conference in 2014 to raise international attention on the country. Don’t expect the government to change things, you need to engage with the international community”

Binta Brown, Partner at Kirkland and Ellis, USA. www.kirkland.com/sitecontent.cfm?contentID=220&itemID=9081

“About the work of ActionAid in Myanmar related to youth…. It’s the most inspiring and exciting work that could be happening anywhere! It’s incredible to think that the country started opening to the world only two years ago and to see the energy, curiosity and passion of the youth. It’s truly inspiring and it’s an example for the world!”

Pooja Warier, Director of UnLtd India, Bombay Connect and Journeys for Change, India. www.unltdindia.org/about-us/team

“It is so inspiring to see the great energy and commitment of Myanmar youth! I want to find ways for collaborations between youth from Myanmar and India!”

Jane McAdam, Scientia Professor of Law, University of New South Wales, Australia. www.law.unsw.edu.au/profile/jane-mcadam

“It’s amazing to have the World Economic Forum in Myanmar. I hope there will be a bottom up dialogue and I hope that the global community will not impose its views but rather listen to the voice of the people here”

Jesmane Boggenpoel, Founder and Director of Harvest, South Africa. www.intersite.co.za/Profile-Boggenpoel.aspx

“About leadership the moral thing is very important because you have people following you and you need to maintain the trust”

Mark Turrell, Founder and CEO of Orcasci, Canada. www.markturrell.wordpress.com/about/

“The work of ActionAid Myanmar is an extremely practical solution for a country in a transitional period, stressing on the capacity building was a very clever move but also very nicely executed”

“The ability of people to change things now is much greater than in four years time: You’d better do something sooner than later!”

Post-2015 Development Policy: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Sameer.dossani — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:25:08 +0000

Last week, the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP) released its final report. Co-chaired by the Heads of Government of Indonesia, Liberia, and the United Kingdom, the report is meant to be a starting point for a debate on what will replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015.

While I’ve had my doubts about the value of the MDGs, there’s little doubt that this new round of targets will set the framework for the development debate in the years ahead. The report produced by the HLP does better than the current MDG framework but falls short in many respects.

The Good

After a lot of pressure from ActionAid and other rights organisations, this document at least attempts to acknowledge the human rights framework. While the phrase “progressive realization” is absent from the document, the term “human rights” appears more than 30 times. The language in goal number two around women’s empowerment reflects the rights-based framework in that it calls for an end to discrimination and gender-based violence as opposed to reductions in inequalities – though without getting into many of the details. This is great to see but it should have been adopted in the rest of the document as well.

The document also calls for an end to “extreme poverty”, which is a somewhat refreshing change from the previous MDG target of halving poverty.

Last but not least, the report picks up on the issue of tax evasion and avoidance by big companies. As ActionAid revealed, developing countries lose much more money due to companies avoiding tax than they receive in aid. Were this element of the report to be taken seriously, it could dramatically change the amount of resources countries have to invest in health, education and development.

The Bad

With the exception of the language on women’s rights, most targets are expressed in terms of numbers that still need to be figured out. For example, the first target under “Provide Quality Education and Lifelong Learning” reads: “Increase by x% the proportion of children able to access and complete pre-primary education.”

This target could be ambitious or it could be redundant depending on what figure x ends up representing.

The variables x, y and z make more than 25 appearances in the section of the document detailing targets, no doubt pleasing fans of algebra but limiting the usefulness of this document

Second, “extreme poverty” – defined as living on less than $1.25 per day – is expected to go down anyway. Setting as top priority the reduction of this statistic in 2030 from 5% of the world’s population (a calculation that appears in the document based on current estimates) to 0% seems unambitious. As does the repeated call for Northern countries to set aid targets at 0.7% of GDP, a call that was first made in the 1970s.

The report also seems to ignore the bigger issue, which is that income inequality is skyrocketing even as those at the bottom do marginally better than they have previously. Indeed the word inequality – though it appears several times in the document – does not appear in the list of targets at all.

The ugly

According to an upcoming World Bank report, the richest 8% of the global population earn 50% of the world’s income. In terms of wealth, the situation is even worse, with the top 1% controlling about 50% of the world’s resources.

The remaining 99% of the population have to make do with only 50% of the world’s wealth and within that the top 5% take another significant chunk.

Despite some changes in recent years, the top 1% is still largely drawn from citizens of the countries you might expect – the U.S. and Western Europe. The bottom 50% is almost exclusively made up of people from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The fact that we live in a world with wealth concentrations that were scarcely imaginable even in feudal times is the defining issue of our age

The HLP report skirts around it in a brave attempt to ignore the elephant in the room.

The document’s subheading reads, “Eradicate Poverty And Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development”. The reference to transformation is not accidental; it seems to be the buzzword of choice in recent policy debates. Indeed, the need for economic transformation resonates with wide sectors of society. But the transformation, especially the question of what are we transforming away from, is not really addressed by this document.

Although the document does a much better job of articulating what global society should be transforming into, it does so without addressing hard questions. Sustainable development initiatives matter little when we are still pumping so much carbon into the atmosphere.

Peace initiatives are great, but how is it possible to move towards global peace when the global arms trade continues to grow?

And nearly four decades after most countries in the South became independent, why is most of Africa and much of Asia still functioning as a market from which the North buys cheap natural resources and sells expensive finished products, without even paying their fair share of tax?

These are the structural issues left unaddressed by the HLP and its advocates. But unless they do find a way to address these issues, the next fifteen years of development could be worse than the past fifteen.

AAM: A place that nurtures the next generation of global leaders

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:00:46 +0000

By Medea Savary, Training and Communication Officer, Global Platform Myanmar

This year Myanmar will host the World Economic Forum on East Asia, an event that can be qualified as historic by many measures. The conference entitled “Courageous Transformation for Inclusion and Integration” is planned to be the largest since its beginning twenty-two years ago and features some key figures from business, government, academia and civil society who will gather in the capital Nay Pyi Taw between June 5th -7th 2013.

Every year the World Economic Forum selects a roster of three hundred promising young talents to be part of the Young Global Leaders network. People working in diverse fields ranging from the business sector to civil society, art and culture, government, media, academia and social entrepreneurship form this unique community of people coming from all over the world.

Young Global Leaders are invited to join the conferences of the World Economic Forum and will also be present this year in the summit on East Asia held in Myanmar’s capital city. The Young Global Leaders arrived in the country a week prior to the conference and are involved in what has been defined as impact journeys: encounters with genuine and engaged actors that are shaping Myanmar’s future.

Among the actors having an impact in the country, ActionAid Myanmar has been selected as one of the leading organisations working with youth, and has been defined as “a place that nurtures the next generation of global leaders”.

To learn how ActionAid is working with and for the youth in Myanmar, some Young Global Leaders will meet with selected representatives of the core projects affecting youth: Fellows, Activista members and also participants of the Youth Participation in Governance training conducted by Global Platform Myanmar.

This encounter will be a unique opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues affecting Myanmar’s youth, share about youth activism and leadership and exchange ideas and advice on strategies for success.

The visit by the Young Global Leaders to ActionAid Myanmar will be held the day before the beginning of the Forum in Nay Pyi Taw. It will be an opportunity for the young participants to expose their most burning issues to the Young Global Leaders, in the hope that the Young Global Leaders will act as spokespersons for the Myanmar youth during the conference.

This meeting is therefore crucial not only to present the Young Global Leaders the variety of youth related work carried out by ActionAid Myanmar, but also to meet with the people directly involved in the projects. Presenting their incredible commitment, professionalism and passion while also sharing their challenges and hopes for the future. Finally, it represents a unique opportunity to lobby for questions affecting youth in Myanmar on a global scale!

As Sam Gregory, Programme Director of WITNESS, a leading organisation that supports people to use moving image to document human rights issues and one of the 2013 Young Global Leaders, shared with us: “I have five minutes at the WEF to share about human rights and I am hoping to find inspiration from the youth of Myanmar - I am not a citizen of this country, so I really want to ask them, what do you want me to say?”