GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, blamed US President Barack Obama for what he called the failure of the US to take a leadership role in seeing that the Doha Round of trade negotiations succeeds.
Zoellick, in a prepared speech Monday 18 July, said “I won’t sugarcoat it. Negotiators from key countries – developed and developing – let themselves fold into defensive crouches. Tactical ploys overwhelmed strategic vision and leadership,” the World Bank’s notes on his speech say. “‘Some want to Declare Doha Dead. Instead, I urge the WTO members to get bolder: Double-Down on Doha. And do so by Thinking Ahead, and Thinking Big.’”
Zoellick was formerly a trade negotiator under President George W Bush, who helped launch the Doha Round in 2001. His strong remarks on the US leadership failure were picked up by international media but were heavily covered by US media, with varying slants: Chicago Tribune/Qatar Living (Reuters), Fox, Guardian, Voice of America, Washington Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva and the Bangladesh government have worked out a programme to reimburse the country’s workers who fled Libya, with help from the IOM. Each of the 36,500 workers forced to return to Bangladesh will be allocated $680 in repatriation funds, the IOM says.
More than one million people have fled Libya since February, when the conflict began there.
The IOM to be reimbursed $12.6m
“The agreement, financed by a $40 million World Bank loan to Bangladesh signed in May, will also reimburse to IOM $12.6m – the repatriation costs of 10,000 of the nearly 31,000 Bangladeshi workers that IOM flew home during the early days of the crisis, mainly from Tunisia and Egypt,” the IOM announced 13 June.
The IOM is currently finalizing its database. The grants will be disbursed starting in mid-July, with the IOM responsible for establishing a database of all those returning, verifying their documents and transferring money to their banks.
Locusts are a recurring problem in western Africa, from May to August, but this year hopes appear to be high that a new $13 million, four-year injection from the World Bank for the six-year-old Palucp programme will improve the situation. The swarms of insects can devastate staple crops in a short time. The Africa Project to Combat Locust Invasions, known by its French acronym Palucp, connects seven countries in order to provide technical assistance and training: Mali, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Chad.
Locust Watch, part of the Food & Agriculture Organization in Rome, reports 3 May that locust populations are currently dropping due to dryness in several regions in Africa.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, background, FAO (Fr)
The World Bank’s Food Price Watch, published 15 February ahead of the Paris G20 meeting, shows that the World Bank’s food price index rose by 15 percent between October 2010 and January 2011. It is 29 percent above its level a year earlier and is only 3 percent below its 2008 peak, with the result that 44 million people have been pushed into extreme poverty since June 2010, according to the bank. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than US$1.25 a day.
Wheat prices have doubled and maize (corn) prices rose 73 percent between June 2010 and January 2011. The cost of rice has risen more slowly, slowing down the slide into deep poverty in some parts of the world.
The broader picture hides the multiple facets of the impact of food prices on poverty: maize crops have been good in many African countries, easing the situation there, but in Haiti, fears of cholera, which has hospitalized 150,000 people, is keeping migrant workers out of the rice fields and a ripe crop risks going unharvested.
Links to other sites: allAfrica, The Globe & Mail
But 1,000 women die a day: numbers must fall further, say UN agencies
Maternal health care, Sierre Leone (photo: UN / H Bigur)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Maternal deaths are falling worldwide, down by 34 percent since 1990, shows a new multi- agency report published 15 September. Some 358,000 women died during or from complications related to childbirth in 2008, down from 546,000 18 years earlier.
The fall is commendable, notes the World Health Organization (WHO), which is one of the author agencies, but the rate of decline is less than half of that needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths between 1990 and 2015.
The report was published jointly by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.
Pregnant women still die from four major causes, according to the report: severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortions. About 1,000 women died due to these complications every day in 2008. Of these, 570 lived in sub-Saharan Africa, 300 in South Asia and five in high-income countries.
Bern, Switzerland / Lagos, Nigeria (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland insists that it does more than any other government to return funds stolen by dictators, and Nigeria is a case in point. But Nigerians are now worried about how to make sure the funds land in the right place in order to put back into the budget money taken out of government coffers illegally.
An editorial published 7 June in This Day/allAfrica notes that
According to a report from Global Financial Integrity, total illicit outflows from Africa between 1970 to 2008 may be as high as $1.8 trillion; Sub-Saharan African countries experienced the bulk of illicit financial outflows with the West and Central African region posting the largest outflow numbers. The top five countries with the highest outflow measured were: Nigeria ($89.5 billion) Egypt ($70.5 billion), Algeria ($25.7 billion), Morocco ($25 billion), and South Africa ($24.9 billion).
The editor says “It is, therefore, cheering to note that the Swiss government now wants to make it difficult for people who loot state treasuries to save looted funds in Swiss banks. We want to believe that that pledge by Switzerland’s Deputy State Secretary of the Swiss Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Pierre Helg, the other day in Abuja is sincere.”
The next step, he argues, is up to Nigeria. “there seems to be no transparency in the in the repatriation of looted funds. Nigerians deserve to know amounts repatriated as they happen and of what use the money is put. This lack of transparency has fuelled speculation that looted funds, if brought back, only meet re-looting.”
Global Forum in Paris this week in response to G-20 demand
Nigerian concern comes as Switzerland leads a two-day international conference in Paris, the Global Forum on the Recovery of Assets and Development, jointly organized by Switzerland, the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The forum is part of the lead-up to the G-20 summit in Toronto, Canada 26-27 June.
$86 billion capital boost is Bank’s first in 20 years
China Sunday 25 April became the third voting power at the World Bank, after the US and Japan. World Bank member countries decided to increase China’s votes from 2.77 percent to 4.42 percent, as part of a commitment made in Istanbul in 2008 to increase the votes of emerging and developing nations. Overall, these countries now have 47.19 percent of the vote, following a 3.13 percent increase approved Sunday.
The voting shift was accompanied by the first capital boost for the World Bank in 20 years, $86b that will go to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the arm of the World Bank that loans money to developing countries.
Links to other sites: World Bank, Xinhua
Francis Blanchard, former ILO director-general
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Francis Blanchard, a French citizen who was director-general of the ILO (International Labour Office) from 1974 to 1989, died Wednesday 9 December 2009, at the age of 93.
He joined the ILO in 1951, where his first assignment was as deputy chief of the manpower division. He was appointed deputy director-general in 1968 with responsibility for technical cooperation and regional activities.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss Federal Council, concerned about changes to the G20 group of the world’s largest economies and calls for changes to other international financial bodies, has told the country’s finance ministry to take steps to strengthen Switzerland’s role in the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank. Developing countries and emerging markets have been calling for reform of these two bodies, the two Bretton Woods international financial institutions, in recent months, suggesting that voting weights need to be reconsidered. Switzerland is keen to ensure that its seats on the Executive Councils of each group become permanent.
The cabinet (Federal Council) has also instructed the finance ministry to work closely with the Swiss National Bank and the Swiss financial market supervisory authority Finma to strengthen its role in the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
Swiss Re building in London. © 2009 Swiss Re
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss Re, a major Swiss reinsurance company, announced 20 October it had issued $290 million in catastrophe bonds for Mexico in four categories, or tranches, together with Goldman Sachs. The bonds allow Mexico to plan for catastrophes like hurricanes and earthquakes and pass on the costs to private investors. It is the first time that a country taps the financial markets for catastrophe insurance.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus and five in Southeast Asia are implementing early warning systems to protect against weather-related events, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Today 14 October is International Day for Disaster Reduction, and the agency is highlighting how early warning and disaster risk reduction can save many lives when extreme weather strikes. Similar projects were introduced in seven southeast European countries in 2007.
These national and regional cooperation projects are part of a concerted programme that relies on technical expertise and funding provided by the WMO, the World Bank, UNDP and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
“Natural hazards are a part of life. But natural hazards only become disasters when people’s lives and livlihoods are swept away…” (Kofi Annan, World Disaster Reduction Day, 2003)
The leaders of the G-20 group of the world’s 20 most important economies, meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have said that the grouping will become the world’s foremost economic coordination body, the White House announced late 24 September. This is a recognition of the importance of emerging economic powers such as Brazil, China and India. The G-8 comprised only the world’s top industrialized nations. In Pittsburgh the US is urging that institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reflect the changing economic circumstances as well. South Korea will preside the next G-20 meeting. Los Angeles Times, New York Times
The world’s economy is set to shrink 2.9 percent this year, and the recovery, when it comes, will be less marked than hoped for, states the World Bank’s Global Development Finance 2009: Charting a Global Recovery, which is published today, 22 June. The forecast shows the economy slowing more than the World Bank predicted in March, when it said 1.7 percent. Poor countries especially are affected. With the economic downturn in richer countries, poorer ones depend more than ever on exports, remittances and foreign direct investment. The funding gap for these countries in 2009 is expected to be between $350 billion and $635b. The bank also revised downwards its predictions for growth in the US to a 3 percent contraction in 2009, while Japan’s economy will shrink 6.8 percent. Bloomberg, World Bank
Da Silva, Sarkozy address jobs crisis summit in Geneva
Nicolas Sarkozy (©2009 ILO)
Lula da Silva (©2009 ILO)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazil’s President Lula da Silva Monday spoke out against international tax shelters and the deficiencies of a capitalist system that provoked the world economic crisis. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France called for an increased role for the ILO at the international level, on a par with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank.
The two are among the heads of state participating in a three-day jobs crisis summit in Geneva that opened Monday 15 June.
The summit is part of the International Labour Organization‘s (ILO) annual labour conference, from 3-19 June, and looks to examine ways in which government policies address the labour situation in the economic downturn.
Zimbabwe will receive $22 million from the World Bank, the first money from the bank since 2000, but it falls far short of the $8.5 billion economically-strapped Zimbabwe has been seeking. The World Bank calls it a first step, saying it will see how the country deals with debt reduction, reports the BBC. Background, World Bank
Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank has said he believes the world economy will shrink 1-2% this year, “We haven’t seen numbers like that since world war two, which really means the 30s, so these are serious and dangerous times.” Reuters
