GLOBAL CRISIS: AID FOR THE SOUTH DROPS WHEN IT IS NEEDED THE MOST

Food security is one of the major challenges we face in the world economic crisis. Now more than ever it is urgent that we not relegate the Millennium Development Goals to the back burner but rather fulfil this commitment to fight against extreme hunger and poverty that was signed by all UN member nations in 2000. The last UN report states that the increase in food prices has left another 100 million people in extreme poverty, to join the almost one billion who suffer from hunger. Then there are the more than two billion that suffer from "hidden" hunger, meaning they live on a diet that lacks essential vitamins and minerals.

RETIREMENT ITALIAN STYLE – WOMEN AND THE PENSION TABOO

The difference in retirement age between men and women -65 and 60, respectively- in Italy lies at the intersection of two major national problems: pension reform, which is a political taboo in the country, and the unequal treatment of women in the labour market in terms of access and pay. It is discriminatory, intolerable, destructive to women, and amounts to a colossal waste of the great untapped capital of Italy's female population.

CHECK-UP OR AUTOPSY? DIAGNOSING THE US ECONOMIC BODY

The mainstream media in 2008 ran myriad diagnoses of the sickness of the US economy. Central bankers, politicians, and their economic advisors sought to explain the economy's swoon in medical terms. The economic patient was described as having suffered a heart attack, a seizure, a collapse, a loss of animal spirits or confidence. Our body economic was described as being in shock, needing liquidity injections, on life support, on the operating table, responding to the medicine and, hopefully, in the recovery room.

CUBA: BELT-TIGHTENING TIME FOR THE BUREAUCRATS

For a number of years, and with increasing frequency, the historic leaders of the Cuban revolution (first Fidel Castro and now his brother Raul, currently president) have expressed concern that the major danger facing the country's political system and the revolutionary process that they began half a century ago is disintegration from within.

There’s no Law that Says People Have to Suffer

Our world today faces unprecedented problems, for a start, the current environmental and financial crises. Without global solidarity and a conscious commitment to peaceful coexistence both within human society and with the systems of life that support us, it is becoming clear that there is no future for us. We have reached a point where we each need to strive in our own unique way to make the greatest possible contribution to the realisation of human rights.

DIVERSITY IN CUBA

The image of a single, homogeneous Cuba is increasingly the stuff of dreams. The single-party, command-economy socialist island of the Caribbean with a monolithic society and politics is giving way to a Cuba of social diversity moving towards a plurality that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago, writes Leonardo Padura, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages. In this article, Padura writes that since the 1990s and the profound economic crisis that the Cuban government dubbed the \"special period in times of peace\", the protectionist ceiling that the state tried to extend over every inhabitant of the island shattered, and there was an emergence of a variety of ways of seeing reality, interpreting it, and living it. Since that period Cuba has turned into a country of many looks and many faces: in addition to the official Cuba of the television and press, there is an underground Cuba, beset by marginalisation of both areas and people; and then there is the mirage of tourism, exclusive beach resorts and clubs only for foreigners, among other Cubas.

INDIA: PUSHING FOR CHANGE

The Five Year Plans (2007-2012) reflect the evolution of India as a nation; they capture the emergence from the under-development stigma to a country that has donned the mantle of a progressive developing economic power. Development that is not just sustainable but also humanistic. Development which reaches out to young girls working in dingy looms for paltry wages, to women rendered homeless due to unavailability of credit and land, to Dalit families abused and burnt by upper caste oppressors for demanding rights and young women killed and victimised in the name of honour, writes Syeda Hameed, member of India's Planning Commission and former member of the National Commission for Women. While India aims for double digit growth in the next Plan period, we are trying to ensure that economic growth encompasses women, especially poor and marginalised women. There is a growing concern that women's contribution to the economy is increasing but their share of the economic pie is only getting smaller and smaller. There is a compelling need to take steps to ensure a fair allocation of government budget resources to women otherwise we will only be providing lip service to women's empowerment. Removing gender inequity and influencing the budget making process go hand-in-hand.

THE POSSIBLE AMAZON

The Amazon constitutes a strategic reserve of potential for a new kind of development for Brazil. The opportunities depend on a structural change in focus which has already been made by some sectors of society, government, and businesses, but at a scale that is still insufficient, writes Marina Silva, senator and former environment minister of Brazil. In this article, the author writes that the Amazon can only be treated and understood correctly if Brazil is too. The government should ensure that the levels of socio-environmental governance achieved in the Amazon are maintained. Land-use zoning should continue to advance. It is essential to continue reducing that frontier of vacant lands and, at the same time, continue increasing protected areas, structuring them so that they serve environmental, social and economic functions. Preserving the Amazon and promoting improvements in the lives of its population is a civilisational challenge for Brazil and the world. Our success will depend on the perseverance of local officials in continuing to expand environmental governance and on the political support of society to ensure that the process is not interrupted.

IT IS TIME TO RETURN TO THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Terrorists go on a rampage of senseless killing in Mumbai. Exhausted and terrified refugees pour into Uganda to escape the fighting in eastern Congo. Ten people are executed in Iran. Three hundred thousand civilians are displaced in northern Sri Lanka. Slowing rates of economic growth cast deep gloom around the world. Not a particularly auspicious moment to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, writes Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International. Anniversaries are a time for reflection and review. It is true that in many respects the human rights situation today is vastly improved from that in 1948. The equality of women, the rights of children, a free press and a fair judicial system are no longer disputed concepts but widely accepted standards that many countries have achieved and others are aspiring to. But it is equally true that injustice, impunity and inequality remain the hallmarks of our time. In 1948, in the face of the enormous challenges, world leaders turned to the Universal Declaration as the affirmation of their common humanity and the blue print for their collective security. Today\'s world leaders must do the same.

EUROPE ADRIFT

There are remarkable differences between the effects of today\'s massive financial crisis on the US, the epicentre of the crisis, and on the European Union, writes Mario Soares, ex-President and ex-Primer Minister of Portugal. In this analysis, Soares writes that after the victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party, the US has become \"the land where anything could happen\", while the Old Continent remains paralysed and seemingly adrift. It is worrying that many European leaders seem not to have even grasped the scale of the challenges the world currently faces and the necessity of working together and joining forces to meet them. It seems improbable that the Treaty of Lisbon will be ratified by the 27 member states, just as predicted months ago. This is a shame, because the strategy embodied by the treaty, approved in March 2000, sets out a social and environmental model and affirms, therefore, that it is possible to make harmonise progressive social policies, workers\' rights, and strict environmental regulation with economic competitiveness, financial rigour, and scientific and technological innovation.

IN ECONOMIC CRISIS, THE POOR AND WEAK SUFFER MOST

In every economic crisis, it is the poor and weak who suffer most. Individuals without savings or a reliable source of income face the most difficulty in surviving sharp economic downturns. It is the same for countries. As the world braces for the worst economic recession since the 1930s, anxiety is on the rise, particularly in the developing world where poverty alleviation programmes hinge on securing open markets and development aid, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) The World Bank\'s latest projection is that global economic growth for 2009 will be a mere 1%. Rich countries will see economic contraction of 0.1% while developing countries will continue to grow next year, albeit at an estimated reduced rate of 4%. The developing world constitutes about one-third of the world economy and as the sole source of growth in 2009 these countries will represent important markets for developed and developing country exporters alike. But the growth levels forecast for next year will not be achieved if countries close their markets and turn off the flow of development funds.

EUROPE: A GIANT CRIPPLE

In case president elect Barack Obama doesn\'t have enough files awaiting him on the desk of the Oval Office, the National Intelligence Council has prepared him some additional reading that may dim his characteristic smile. \"Global 2025: A World Transformed\" is the title of the futuristic document that is part alarming, part depressing, writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet professor and director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami. In this analysis, Roy writes that according to the report, by 2025 the European integration process will have suffered a period of growth too sluggish to be able to advance European interests. To bolster its coherence, the EU will have to resolve the \"democratic deficit that separates Brussels from the citizens\". The EU is capable of contributing to the \"stability and democratisation of the periphery of Europe\", particularly the Balkans and Turkey. But Brussels may fail to persuade the citizens of EU member states of the benefits of deeper integration and to convince them to meet the needs of an aging population \"by carrying out painful reforms\". As a consequence, the EU could turn into a \'\'gigantic cripple\", distracted by \"internal bickering and competing national agendas\". The result will be an EU incapable of \"translating its economic power into global influence\". This grim scenario is enough to take away Obama\'s smile. It is bad news not only for Europe but for the US as well. Optimists, however, feel that the predictions in the report are exaggerated, the product of shoddy speculation. The writing in many sections of the document resembles a first-year university essay. After all, a challenge -which is what the report outlines- is not the same thing as destiny.

AFRICA AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

After African leaders nearly unanimously refused to sign Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Commission (EC) a year ago, EC resorted to the divide and conquer tactics and arm-twisting with individual countries to convince them to sign \"interim agreements\", writes Demba Moussa Dembele, director of the African Forum on Alternatives (Senegal). In this article, the author writes that the struggle against the EPAs in their current form must continue and even redouble. The ongoing food, energy, and financial crises are inextricably linked to the implementation of \"free trade\" policies and unregulated capital flows and offer a preview of what is in store for African countries if they enter into a \"free-trade\" agreement with the EU. Africa must avoid any free-trade agreement that would aggravate its domination and the plunder of its resources. On the contrary, Africa must reject the EPAs in their current form and move toward alternatives. This does not mean a rejection of any kind of cooperation with Europe. Africa wants a genuine form of cooperation with Europe free of neocolonial paternalism, domination, and exploitation, and based on mutual respect and the promotion of mutual interests.

DECENCY, TRUTH, AND THE ATTACK ON MILAN KUNDERA

The lamentable scandal that broke a few weeks ago about the alleged denunciation by the young Milan Kundera of a seemingly possible \"western\" spy in then Czechoslovakia, can be examined from every angle, but there has been little comment about the ethical component of this probable act of denunciation, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a ten languages. In this article, Padura writes that opportunists abroad and inside the country are waiting for just a glimpse of weakness to release the avalanche of hatred fermented in cowardice, frustration, envy, and mediocrity. Such figures are always lying in wait. But how many of them have asked themselves whether Kundera lived ethically, whether he was a decent man in his thinking and character? This world in crisis -and not only financial- is in desperate need of more decency. To fell great trees for presumed sins and so fan doubt and cause pain involves more mean-spiritedness than political uprightness. There are enough rotten trees that deserve to be chopped down to stoke their fury. Certainly the truth deserves its place. But the truth is that many of those casting the first - and second and third - stones should consider how they would have behaved in similar or even less dire circumstances than 1950s Czechoslovakia. Stones thrown often turn into boomerangs. But unfortunately, this type of zealot usually has no familiarity with the notion of decency. And too often they have little concern with another concept: truth.

DEVELOPMENT FINANCING CONFERENCE: THE INEQUALITY-POVERTY NEXUS

From 29 November to 2 December 2008 in Doha, Qatar, the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development will be reviewed. It should be an opportunity to establish the foundation for a more inclusive and democratic international financial system, write Cecilia Alemany, manager at the Association for Women\'s Rights in Development (AWID) and Anne Schoenstein, a consultant with the Association for Women\'s Rights in Development (AWID). In this article, the author writes that at the Qatar conference there will not be a Declaration of Consensus, only an Outcome document, because among other actors the US has been blocking any substantive commitment or binding obligation on development. Even with the more progressive new US president, the underlying mechanisms of the \"development industry\" or the \"development business\" are still based on a set of hypothesis and principles that undermine the right to development and to self-determination. Changing them will require true political will. For women\'s rights groups and advocates, the Monterrey Consensus did not go far enough, and we may experience the same disappointment with the Doha Review Conference if there is no reference to clear gender equality commitments. We need a new kind of leadership from those groups that were historically marginalised, including women. The new political landscape in the US is an opportunity and an optimistic sign in this sense. Inclusiveness is not just \"politically correct\"; now it is realpolitik.

FINANCING GENDER EQUALITY: A CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE

Today's multiple global crises--of food, fuel and finance-- make clear that the conventional development paradigm is no longer viable. The promotion of market liberalisation and fiscal austerity as the instruments for stimulating economic growth and with it, sustainable development must be revisited, writes Ines Alberdi, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). International agreements, starting with the 2000 Millennium Declaration, and including the outcome of the 2008 High Level Event on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), have endorsed economic policies that move beyond economic growth to embrace more equitable and sustainable development. The Monterrey Consensus referred to financing gender-sensitive, people-centred development as essential for responding to challenges of globalisation. In addition, a growing body of evidence shows that investing in gender equality has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth and that increasing women's economic options is central to achieving the MDGs. As world leaders meet in Doha -from November 29 to December 2- it is urgent that they find ways to advance the Monterrey agenda. It is now widely recognised that women's empowerment and gender equality are key drivers of policies to build food security, reduce poverty, safeguard the environment and enhance development effectiveness. Women are also important agents of economic development and we need policies that both recognise this and actively support ­and finance--gender equality.

THE NEW GEOPOLITICS OF HUNGER

In the 1960s about 80 million people suffered from hunger worldwide. In this period global capitalism was peaking and transnational companies were expanding throughout the planet, dominating markets and exploiting cheap labour and the natural resources of peripheral countries, writes Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the Landless Farmers Movement (MST) and of Via Campesina Brazil. This was the world into which the Green Revolution was born, with its promise to end hunger. Its mentor, Normal Borlaug, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. The real objective was to introduce a new system of agricultural production based on the intensive use of industrial inputs. Productivity per hectare increased and world production quadrupled. And yet the number of people suffering from hunger grew far faster, from 80 to 800 million. Today, prices of agricultural products around the world are no longer tied to production costs or even to supply and demand. Instead, they swing rapidly in response to market speculation and transnational corporations\' control of the international food markets. Meanwhile the number of people suffering from hunger rose in the last two years from 800 to 925 million.

PROTECTIONISM – A FAILSAFE WAY TO DEEPEN THE RECESSION

History teaches that in a period of financial market upheaval and pending economic downturn like the one we\'re experiencing, the resort to protectionism advocated by some can only exacerbate the situation, as it did after the great Wall Street Crash of 1929, writes Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In this article, the author writes that US protectionist measures after the 1929 crash touched off a domino effect of retaliation and counter-retaliation among trading partners which provoked a severe contraction of international trade, depressed growth, and drove up unemployment around the industrial world. In the US the jobless rate soared to 25 percent. The expansion of trade is a powerful instrument in overcoming economic crises. While it is essential that governments resist the siren song of protectionism, it is even more urgent that they conclude the ongoing WTO trade negotiations under the Doha Development Round, initiated in 2001. The objective of the round, shared by the 153 WTO members, is the creation of a more equitable, ambitious, relevant, and development-oriented trading system.

OBAMA BRINGS HOPE TO CUBA TOO

While the Cuban government was more cautious that usual in their remarks about the US presidential election and even the overwhelming victory of Democrat Barack Obama, the people in the street, whose daily living conditions are dire, greeted the news of the election of the first black president of the United States with relief and raised hopes, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into ten languages. His most recent work La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best detective novel in Spanish for 2005. In this article for IPS, the author writes that after more than a century-and-a-half of traumatic relations, almost fifty years of a trade and financial embargo, and two terms of President George W. Bush, whose hostility to Cuba reached an almost paranoid intensity, Cuban-American relations should undergo at least a slight shift with Obama as president. The old subject of the embargo and its failure to destabilise the regime in Cuba will reach his desk at any moment. And if it is evaluated in an intelligent manner, he will respond in the only intelligent way possible: with a radical change in Washington\'s approach to the island. Were this historic shift to occur, the next question would be how the Cuban government would react, after having long used the blockade to its own benefit, for audiences both on and off the island, presenting itself as a David battling Goliath. At least President Raul Castro has indicated his openness to a dialogue, in the only possible, dignified form - between equals. Though the fate of many pre-election promises is all too well known, the new US president, despite the fact that he has said he supports the embargo against Cuba -no US presidential candidate can say otherwise- did dare rouse Florida\'s Cuban-American community with the suggestion that he might initiate a dialogue with Havana, and in any case, ease restrictions on Cubans living in the US regarding visits to the island and remittances to family there.

LET US HOPE

Once in office will Obama prove that his bellicose threats against Iran and Pakistan were just words spoken to lure in a certain category of voter during the election? asks Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist, author of \'\'The Open Veins of Latin America\'\' and \'\'Memories of Fire\'\'. In this article, the author asks, will Obama make good on his promise to close the sinister prison at Guantanamo? And end the sinister blockade of Cuba? Will Obama sign and abide by the Kyoto agreement, or will he continue to grant impunity to the biggest polluter on the planet? Will he govern for people, or for automobiles? Will he shift the devastating course of a way of life in which the few steal the destiny of the many? Will Obama, the first black president of the United States, realise the dream of Martin Luther King, or the nightmare of Condoleeza Rice? This White House, which is now his house, was built with the labour of black slaves. Let\'s hope he never forgets that.

ADVICE FOR SUMMITEERS ON REFORMING THE GLOBAL CASINO

A summit on how to reform the failed global financial system will be held on November 15, 2008 in the US, the heart of the meltdown, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing The Green Economy (2007) and co-creator with the Calvert Group of the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators. In this article, Henderson writes that the world\'s money systems have been corrupted and the basic trust which underlies all markets has been shattered. While we are learning that not all our transactions can be trusted to money systems, we are also seeing that there are many new, pure, information-based trading systems, from international barter to \"countertrade\" between governments to trading between global companies of everything from media and telephony to commodities. As the US will play catch-up at the November 15th summit, there are some additional reforms they might sponsor: imposing globally-harmonised currency-exchange taxes on the USD 2 trillion daily currency trading to dampen speculation; and reducing the amount countries spend annually on military hardware - now over USD 1 trillion - with a UN Security Insurance Agency (UNSIA), which would fund a standing, properly-trained UN peace-keeping force.