A few days ago, the United States, Japan and 10 other countries from the Pacific region arrived at a final agreement to approve what has been cited as the largest regional trade accord in history, The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. The trade deal focuses on lowering trade barriers to goods and services, tightens intellectual property (IP) laws and establishes an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.
Amidst the celebrity hype over the announcement of the United Nations’ Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Pope Francis’ address of the UN member states, not all who travelled to New York City for the UN Development Summit were buying it.
More than 150 world leaders, hundreds of representatives from Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and corporate executives attended the UN Summit on Sustainable Development from September 25-27 at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York to formally adopt a new sustainable development agenda.Titled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, the agreement contains a set of 17 goals and 169 targets that would come into effect on 1 January 2016, replacing the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000.
Vandana Shiva: Keynote Message for Dialogues for Justice, Public Interest, and the Common Good
[Focus] The paradox! Non-binding ‘Global Goals’ vs binding trade agreements
[Focus] The paradox! Non-binding ‘Global Goals’ vs binding trade agreements
Member States of the United Nations (UN) have set 2015 as the year when they chart a new course for humanity. After nearly three years of consultations and intergovernmental negotiations, Heads of State and Governments adopted the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” on September 24, 2015. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon describes this as “a plan of action for ending poverty in all its dimensions, irreversibly, everywhere, and leaving no one behind.”
A day after 193 member states of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) together with grassroots activists, faith-based groups and NGOs organized a side event at the margins of the UN summit to discuss pressing issues affecting the marginalized and frontline communities in the context of the post-2015 development agenda.
A day after the world’s leaders adopted a new set of ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) peoples’ organizations of peasants, workers, migrants, and frontline climate-impacted communities from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe held coordinated country launches of Global Peoples’ Surge (GPS) on 28 September 2015.
What’s at stake for the people at the 21st Conference of Parties in Paris?
On November 17, 2015, activists, civil society leaders, academics, and thinkers from different global regions will gather in Manila, Philippines for the 3rd International Festival of People’s Rights and Struggles (IFPRS) at the Bahay ng Alumni. The IFPRS is a space for peoples to share and learn from each other about new and longstanding issues related to people’s individual and collective rights. The IFPRS offers a wide range of opportunities for learning and networking with simultaneous forums, workshops, strategy sessions, film showings and exhibits.
It took a photo of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, a Syrian refugee whose body was washed up dead on the shores of Turkey, for the world to notice the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today. Driven by poverty and war, the mass exodus of refugees arriving in the European region is considered as the biggest refugee crisis since the end of the Second World War. Many are now wondering how this situation worsened. Why did the United Nations (UN) and powerful Northern countries allow such crisis to intensify?
Negotiators have yet again wrapped up another set of climate talks without producing a draft text that will be the basis of a new global climate agreement to be adopted in December by the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
IBON International strongly denounces the killings of Emerito “Emok” Samarca, executive director of the Alternative Learning Center for Livelihood and Agricultural Development (ALCADEV), Dionel Campos, chairperson of an indigenous peoples organization in his community along with his cousin Bello Sinzo. We express our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones. We find these vile acts of murder beyond inhumane, and representative of the state of terror perpetrated by the same government forces who swore to protect its people.
The authors of the 5th assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stressed the need for urgent global coordinated action to combat human-induced climate change based on historical responsibility and equity.
On August 2, 2015, Ambassador Macharia Kamau of Kenya declared that delegates from 193 countries of the United Nations had finally arrived at a consensus behind a new development agenda for the next 15 years. After almost three years of consultations among various stakeholders and deliberations among Member States on a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that expire this year, a post-2015 development agenda was finally agreed after feverish negotiations that extended two days beyond the target date of completion