Three ways to pay for aid commitments
EMBASSY – Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Stephen Harper’s announcement that child and maternal health will be the signature theme of June’s G8 meeting is certainly timely.

Every day 1,400 women die of pregnancy-related causes.  Every day 24,000 children under the age of five die of what are largely preventable causes. Progress on improving child and maternal health is the furthest off-track of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) UN member states committed to in 2000. This focus gives MDGs four and five, on child and maternal health, the push they need ahead of September’s United Nations High Level Meeting and ten year review of the MDGs.

But funding the initiative comes during difficult days – a global crisis and a budget deficit. Resources are tight.

Rethinking the international financial system during a time of crisis

Introduction
On October 19 and 20, 2009, the Halifax Initiative held a conference, co-hosted by The North South Institute, the University of Ottawa and the School of International Development and Global Studies (SIDGS), entitled "What’s Missing in the Response to the Global Financial Crisis?" The meeting brought together experts from a range of backgrounds to analyze the challenges facing the global economy, discuss the ways in which the international community has responded to the current financial crisis, and identify shortcomings in these responses.

CSOs push for Common Approaches revamp
Members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are currently reviewing a 2007 Council Recommendation regarding export credit agency (ECA) operations. The Recommendation on Common Approaches on the Environment and Officially Supported Export Credits (Common Approaches) is a “gentlemen’s agreement” that seeks to establish a level playing field regarding ECA environmental practice. CSOs argue that the Recommendation’s impact is undermined by the lack of effective accountability mechanisms to ensure consistent and effective application by member governments.

November 11, 2009

Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund,
700 19th Street, N.W.,
Washington, D.C. 20431

Dear Mr. Strauss-Kahn:

Re: Request for civil society participation in IMF study on how the financial sector can help pay for the bailouts 

In September, the Group of 20 (G20), at their summit in Pittsburgh, mandated the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with preparing a report ahead of the next G20 summit in June 2010 to consider “how the financial sector could make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burdens associated with government interventions to repair the banking system.”

In June 2010, the Halifax Initiative launched the first in a series of radio documentary -type podcasts under the rubric of "Definitely NOT the G8" just ahead of the 2010 Group of Eight (G8) and Twenty (G20) meetings in Huntsville and Toronto, Canada on June 25-27 2010.

The podcasts have three goals:

• to raise awareness in Canada about progressive social, economic and environmental justice issues in the international development and finance arena that are often missing from, or disregarded in, official discussions and the mainstream media;