Wednesday, December 12, 2007

South Centre Digital TV: 2008 EU - Africa Summit at Lisbon: An African Perspective

Mr. Demba Moussa DEMBELE, Director, African Forum on Alternatives, Senegal provides an African perspective on the EU - Africa Summit 2008 being held in Lisbon. Framed as the Summit to herald a new relationship between EU and Africa, is EU really showing sincerity in this direction?



The whole of Africa is watching them, for the recent EU moves on the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with Africa proves to be on the contrary.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Africa should focus on "domestic needs, not exports"

Mat Noor Nawi, the director of the economic planning unit of the Prime Minister's Office in Malaysia, told the participants attending the conference on the Helsinki Process gathered at Dar es Salaam that the interface between developed and developing nations should not favour one side at the expense of the other.

"Developing countries should be allowed to determine their own policy space," he said, adding that Malaysia's success story shows much emphasis needs to be placed on monitoring and evaluation of programmes and policies. He also stressed flexibility and people-centred approaches, political stability, well-coordinated mechanisms and active NGOs and private firms as part of the reasons for growth in the Malaysian economy.

Dr Samuel Wangwe, a consultant, and Dr Yash Tandon, executive director of the intergovernmental think tank South Centre, based in Geneva, Switzerland, agreed that alternative knowledge systems are needed. Wangwe proposed increasing capacity for policy research. Participants reiterated that developing countries should be allowed to determine their own policy spaces and that developed countries' support for developing countries should be flexible.

Read the complete news report appearing in Mail and Guardian, South Africa at:
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/&articleid=326753

South Centre in Media: Disparities Seen In Developing Countries’ TRIPS Implementation

The South Centre recently organized a seminar on "The Implementation Game: Developing Countries, the TRIPS Agreement and the Global Politics of Intellectual Property" in Geneva on 5 December 2007. The seminar was chaired by Dr. Xuan Li, Coordinator of the Innovation and Access to Knowledge Programme, South Centre and Dr. Carolyn Deere, Director, Global Trade Governance Project, Global Economic Governance Programme, University of Oxford, UK was the keynote speaker.

This event has been reported by the IP-Watch in its article "Disparities Seen In Developing Countries’ TRIPS Implementation." Although developing countries have strong concerns about the TRIPS agreement, a significant number of them have implemented even higher IP standards than those required by TRIPS, according to research on 107 countries presented by Carolyn Deere, director of the Global Trade Governance Project at the University of Oxford. The complete article is available at: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=865

The Seminar was fifth in the series of the South Innovation Perspectives regularly organized by the South Centre which aims to provide a forum where cutting-edge research and ideas on innovation, access to knowledge and intellectual property, from a development perspective, are presented and debated.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Enhancing a development agenda in climate change for developing countries

South Centre organized a side event at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali on 5 December 2007. Almost 70 colleagues attended this event on "Enhancing a development agenda in climate change for developing countries" organized in Room Wind at Grand Hyatt.

The panel of speakers included: Vice Yu, South Centre; Matthew Stilwell, Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and Scott Stone (IGSD); Martin Khor, Third World Network; Meenakshi Raman, Friends of the Earth-Malaysia; and Sivan Kartha, Stockholm Environment Institute.

The South FACE produced for the Event is available at:
http://www.southcentre.org/southface/South_Face-Bali_Climate_Change-5Dec.doc

IISD Coverage for this event is available at:
http://www.iisdrs.org/2007/12/day-3-at-clim-1.html

(Photo Credit: Earth and News Bulletin, IISD)

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

South Centre at Climate Change Negotiations @ Bali

The 13th session of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is underway in Bali from 3-14 December 2007. Delegates gathered will deliberate on a range of agenda items, with a major focus being on post-2012 when the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol will expire.

South Centre has the status of an "Observor" at the UNFCCC negotiations and is represented in Bali by Vice Yu, Coordinator of the Global Governance for Development Programme and by Vikas Nath, Head - Media and Communication.

A side event "Advancing a Development Agenda on Climate Change" is being organized here on 5 December by the South Centre.