Category: Global Partnerships

By Reinhardt Jacobsen VIENNA (IDN) – Japan has announced that it will support eight UNIDO projects aimed at ensuring human security for the most vulnerable populations in Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia and the Syrian Arab Republic. Ambassador Mitsuru Kitano, the Permanent Representative of Japan to the International Organizations in Vienna, affirmed on […]

By Hazel Henderson* JACKSONVILLE, Florida (IDN) – After a few drinks, most bankers, economists and investors will admit that money is not wealth. Like inches and centimetres, money is a metric, and it used for tracking real wealth: human ingenuity and technological productivity interacting with natural resources and biodiversity undergirding all human societies along with the […]

By Jacques N. Couvas ANKARA (IDN) – “Solutions for the South by the South” was the recurring theme that resounded throughout the duration of the Global South-South Development Expo 2017 (GSSD Expo) from November 27 to 30, 2017 in Antalya, the largest Turkish city on the Mediterranean coast. This landmark event of the United Nations […]

By Jesse Griffiths*

BRUSSELS (IDN | INPS) – The Sustainable Development Goals are ambitious objectives; business as usual will not deliver them. Speaking on the recent International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, UN Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the need for new thinking. “The pledge to leave no one behind will require innovative approaches, partnerships, and solutions,” he said.

But this new model will only come about if we radically reshape the national, regional, and global economies that lie behind many of the obstacles to achieving the SDGs. We must rethink the way we govern and manage the global financial and economic system.

By Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | ASTANA (IDN) – Kazakhstan’s “biggest and probably most ambitious event” EXPO 2017, which concluded in the capital city on September 10 after three months, is leaving behind some far-reaching legacies.

One of the legacies is ‘Nur Alem,’ the world’s largest spherical building with the diameter of 80 and height of 100 meters. It is the world’s first ‘complete sphere’ building and hence called the Sphere. Integration of photovoltaic elements into the façade allows conversion of sunlight energy into electric one. Two wind generators are also provided for at the upper part of the sphere. Watch Our Video for an interview with Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko on the legacies of EXPO 2017 Astana

By Jutta Wolf

BERLIN | BRUSSELS (ACP-IDN) – Seventy-nine countries from Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) are determined to speak with one voice as they prepare to negotiate a major partnership framework with the 27-nation European Union (EU).

The new accord will follow on the current ACP-EU Partnership Agreement (also known as the Cotonou Agreement), which covers trade, development cooperation and political dialogue between the two parties until 2020.

Leading up to the launch of negotiations for the post-Cotonou period in 2018, there is a clear common interest in aligning future ACP-EU cooperation to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

By Samantha Sen

LONDON (ACP-IDN) – The Brexit question as seen by the small and poor group of African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries is far simpler – and potentially far more lethal – than those the more usual Brexit debate engages with. It belongs less to debate on knock-on effects rolling into the future than to questions of physical survival here and now. When a fifth of Fiji exports head for the UK, when a Caribbean island lives off bananas sold to Britain, new spokes in buying and selling can hit the people, and even all of the people, of a small nation.

By Robert Kibet

NAIROBI (IDN) – Providing financial resources to the more developed among the developing countries is a very difficult bias to overcome, according to Angel GurrIa, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Gurria was speaking to IDN during the Second High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) which ran from November 28 to December 1 in the Kenyan capital.

“There is a problem with the flows of money that include aid,” said Gurria. “Who’s better to spend it? A country like Kenya that has expertise and larger companies or a country that is very poor and underdeveloped? Those countries with a higher level of GDP per capita tend to attract more because they can have large projects and a greater spending capacity.”

By Bernhard Schell

DUBAI (IDN) – The rise of emerging economies in the Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (ECIS) region has boosted South-South cooperation, according to a new report.

The study by the UN Office for South-South Cooperation and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is the first of its kind. It explores how mutual support has intensified over the last twenty years, following the region’s fundamental changes in economic, political, and social structures.

The study covers 31 countries and territories, highlighting the wealth of South-South Cooperation (SSC) in the region. It cites many interesting examples of SSC, and provides concrete suggestions to national policy-makers and other relevant stakeholders on how to catalyse SSC to achieve development objectives and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

PARIS (IDN) – Sweden’s Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, Director General of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), has been appointed as the new Chair of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

Petri Gornitzka replaces outgoing DAC Chair Erik Solheim, who recently became Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She will start her new role on a part time basis from July 11, 2016 and take up full-time duties in the autumn.