WTO’s future in doubt after India blocks trade deal
The future of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has been thrown into doubt after eleventh-hour attempts to salvage a global trade deal collapsed.
Talks broke down after India’s refusal to back a deal unless it included concessions allowing developing countries freedom to subsidise and stockpile food.
An agreement on the deal, centred on loosening global customs rules, had been reached in Bali in December, with a deadline of midnight on Thursday to ratify it. But it was scuppered after the WTO’s 160 members failed to reach agreement over India’s demands.
World Bank lending policies ‘environmentally disastrous’
Radical plans by the World Bank to relax the conditions on which it lends up to $50bn (£29bn) a year to developing countries have been condemned as potentially disastrous for the environment and likely to weaken protection of indigenous peoples and the poor.
A leaked draft of the bank’s proposed new “safeguard policies”, seen by the Guardian, suggests that existing environmental and social protection will be gutted to allow logging and mining in even the most ecologically sensitive areas, and that indigenous peoples will not have to be consulted before major projects like palm oil plantations or large dams palm go ahead on land which they traditionally occupy.
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Yunus meets Suu Kyi in Yangon
Nobel Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus met Myanmar democratic icon and Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at her home in Yangon.
During the first-ever meeting between the two Nobel laureates, Yunus briefed Suu Kyi about social business programmes in Bangladesh, including micro-credit, healthcare, education and vocational training, renewable energy social businesses as well as equity investment for the development of enterprises by the unemployed young people of Grameen Bank families, said a Yunus Centre Press release on Monday.
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Government urged to disband RAB
The government should disband the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), Human Rights Watch said Monday.
In a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, it said that until the RAB was disbanded, it should be made an entirely civilian force by withdrawing all military officers and soldiers from its membership.
Evidence that RAB officers were responsible for the contract killings of seven men in April, allegedly on behalf of a ruling party member, have provoked outrage in Bangladesh and are yet another example of how the unit has operated as a deat...
Evidence that RAB officers were responsible for the contract killings of seven men in April, allegedly on behalf of a ruling party member, have provoked outrage in Bangladesh and are yet another example of how the unit has operated as a deat...
GIZ, EU complete four years of collaboration in Bangladesh
The German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and the European Union (EU) have completed four years of their collaboration for improving labour standards in Bangladesh’s readymade garment (RMG) industry.
An event to mark the completion of four years was organized in Dhaka by the ‘Promotion of Social and Environmental Standards in Industry’ (PSES).
PSES project has been commissioned for five years from 2010 to 2015 by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Commerce being the leading exec...
PSES project has been commissioned for five years from 2010 to 2015 by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Commerce being the leading exec...
Uneasy alliance reveals complex social issues
Bangladesh might be better known for natural disasters and human suffering, but for years this south Asian nation has been a kind of Silicon Valley in the field of social entrepreneurship and anti-poverty programs.
It is the birthplace of BRAC, the world’s largest non-government organization that’s helping survivors of the 2013 Bangladesh factory collapse, and Grameen Bank, better known in the West since winning the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
However, the success of Grameen and BRAC is still dwarfed by the sheer scale the economic and environmental problems faced by this crowded, low-lying nation of 150 million. So the challenge for behemoths and start ups alike is to scale up — not just to have a wider social impact but also to sustain the enterprise so it depends less on charity.
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