The broad trends are international: the crisis in farming is global. In poorer countries the situation is even worse. Half of the world's people still make their living from the land - and it is they who feed the majority of the world's poorest people. In South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa more than 70 per cent of the population makes a living from the land. Agriculture counts, on average, for half of total economic activity. Why is the crisis happening? Somebody, somewhere, must be benefiting. The answer is not hard to discover. It lies not in the soil, but inside the corporations which have become known collectively as 'agribusiness'.

Policies are implemented within an institutional setting that dictates the distribution of costs and benefits. Among the challenges that we face today is the need to create a set of policy and legal instruments that will reconstruct the gender-biased institutional setting within which globalisation currently operates. The markets have generated a structure of incentives that encourages women to undertake productive activities. But we know of hardly any incentives to encourage men to take over caring responsibilities. The result is that social reproduction is being moved out of the households and into the privatised market sphere in what appears to be a move out of the frying pan and into the fire, says this paper from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).

The view that developing countries would need to embrace trade liberalisation as a means out of poverty was "wrong and misguided". Zambia and Ghana were both examples of countries in which the opening up of markets has led to sudden falls in rates of growth with sectors being unable to compete with foreign goods. Even in those countries that have experienced overall economic growth as a result of trade liberalisation, poverty has not necessarily been reduced. This is not the message of any anti-globalisation think-tank, but that of former United Kingdom trade and industry secretary Stephen Byers.

Ten years ago, in an attempt to improve its understanding of investment decisions in developing countries, the World Bank undertook a survey of 80 mining companies. The survey revealed that the main investment criteria, after mineral potential and existing infrastructure, was a satisfactory legal and fiscal framework. This message was enthusiastically embraced across Africa, and legal reform of the mining sector contributed to a more favourable environment for foreign investment. However, a recent study by Groupe de Recherche sur les Activités Minières en Afrique (GRAMA) at the Faculté de Science Politique et de Droit, Université du Québec à Montréal, concludes that these measures have entailed a redefinition of the role of the state that is so profound that it has no historical precedent. The study warns that the various reforms have the potential effect of driving down standards in areas of critical importance for social and economic development, as well as in protection of the environment in the countries concerned.

New research from Christian Aid - along with important studies from some of the world's leading development specialists, and research by both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - indicates that poor countries dependent on oil revenues have a higher incidence of four great and interconnected ills. Oil, in these conditions, becomes the key ingredient in a 'lethal cocktail' of greater poverty for the vast majority of the population, increased corruption, a greater likelihood of war or civil strife, and dictatorial or unrepresentative government.

If there's one phrase I could do with hearing less of during 2002, it's "civil society". I'm not alone. Many of my friends, community activists and organisers in a number of countries also cringe at the ritualized, ubiquitous usage of the phrase. We shudder at the thought that we might be mistaken for being part of it. Civil society is a construct which allows politically and economically powerful institutions to decide who is in, and who is out, when and if it suits their interests. Furthermore, it has the added value of sounding broad and inclusive enough to add a gloss of legitimacy to any institution, programme, or system which can be shown to the public as somehow engaging with civil society, whoever that is.

Deforesting the Earth makes clear that forests are not eliminated by mere logging but overwhelmingly by clearing for agriculture. Forests cut for wood production, no matter how abusively, usually grow back--even if often quite altered in composition. So the story of deforestation is also the story of the development of farming systems, and it is fundamentally driven by growth in human numbers. But that growth itself is tied to the development of a global industrial economy, in which extraction of wood products has played a critical part.

On May 13th, senior officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) will meet in Geneva ostensibly to promote greater "coherence" amongst their policies. There are good reasons to be concerned. Over the past decades, the IMF and the World Bank have systematically promoted controversial policy reforms in developing countries. Typically these include liberalization of trade and financial flows, deregulation, privatization and budget austerity. Strategies for this purpose have required many developing countries to break with past policies and to pursue closer and faster integration into the world economy. As a result, the economies of developing countries have been characterized by slow and erratic growth, increased instability, and rising income gaps.
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From the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the United Nations, to Interpol and the World Health Organisation (WHO), dozens of international agencies now work to regulate world trade, telecommunications, transportation, labour, business, health and the environment, among other issues. In almost all of those bodies, poor and powerless nations, like Somalia and Afghanistan, are under-represented while the rich and powerful, like Britain and the United States, operate with almost unchecked authority and overwhelming power. Some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are impatient to see real change.

This paper from Oxfam highlights the impressive steps being taken to address the overwhelming popular demand for basic education by governments in a number of developing countries since the Education For All Fast Track initiative was launched in 2002. However, the authors argue that such steps are not being matched by funding from the G7.

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The Board of Directors of the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF) has agreed to launch a multi-year global anti-corruption program based on the development by civil society of low cost projects that can have a major impact,” stated PTF Chairman Kumi Naidoo, the Secretary General and Chief Executive Officer of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the global civil society non-governmental organisation, which is headquartered in South Africa.

A new paper by the economist Sanjay Reddy and the philosopher Thomas Pogge demonstrates that the World Bank's methodology in calculating global poverty is so flawed that its calculations cannot possibly be correct. Not only does it appear wildly to underestimate the level of global poverty, but the downward trend it purports to show appears to be an artefact of the way in which it has been compiled. The World Bank's figures, against which the success or failure of the entire global economy is measured, are useless.

Shell has boasted record profits for the first quarter of 2003, as well as the "highest hydrocarbon production in recent history ". While Shell's directors and shareholders will be celebrating the figures, the profits may generate less enthusiasm among poor, vulnerable communities around the world whose health and local environment is suffering as a result of Shell's aging and polluting refineries and depots. The news comes just one week after its Annual General Meeting was dominated by representatives from communities around the world who are suffering as a result of living next to the company's polluting refineries.

The Commission on Human Rights in Geneva adopted during its during its 59th session a resolution on the right to education. In this resolution, adopted without a vote, the Commission, among other things, urged all States to give full effect to this right and to guarantee that it was recognised and exercised without discrimination of any kind; to take all appropriate measures to eliminate obstacles to effective access to education, notably by girls, including pregnant girls, children living in rural areas, children belonging to minority groups, indigenous children, migrant children, refugee children, internally displaced children, children affected by armed conflicts, children with disabilities, children affected by infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, sexually exploited children, children deprived of their liberty, children living in the street, and orphaned children, taking all measures to prohibit explicitly any form of discrimination.

It is the biggest and most powerful drug company on the planet. Its famous blue diamond-shaped Viagra pills have made it a fortune beyond the dreams of small nation states and the butt of smutty jokes worldwide. But Pfizer's global reach has not turned the world's third largest business into a benevolent giant, according to its critics. Quite the contrary. The vast multinational stands accused of blocking reforms to global drug pricing that would help lift impoverished countries out of disease and spur their development.

Five senior Kenyan government officials appeared in court on Thursday to be charged with corruption for allegedly making fraudulent bank deposits resulting in the loss of more than $14-million of public funds. President Mwai Kibaki, whose opposition coalition swept to power in December after 24 years of rule by Daniel arap Moi, has vowed to wipe out the corruption blamed for a steep decline in one of Africa's most promising economies.

Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano said in Maputo on Monday that the state needs the cooperation of the private sector for more schools and better quality education. Speaking during the inauguration of the new premises of one of the country's private universities, the Higher University and Polytechnic Institute (ISPU), Chissano stressed, however, that the state would not simply allow private schools to work as they saw fit.

As the economic burden of HIV/Aids increases in sub-Saharan Africa, allocation of the burden among levels and sectors of society is changing. The private sector has more scope to avoid the economic burden of Aids than governments, households, or nongovernmental organisations, and the burden is being systematically shifted away from the private sector.

Treatment success and case detection rates for tuberculosis (TB) have improved appreciably in Africa since 1993 when the disease was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO), but the current indicators in the region still fall short of global targets, a WHO official has said in Harare, Zimbabwe.