In response to a pelting critique from academics, economists and grassroots organisers worldwide, the 2011 'State of the Microcredit Summit Campaign Report' plans to address the controversies surrounding a development scheme that many believe to have failed. A tempest of questions, censures and confusions has battered at the doors of Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs), whose small-scale loans many are calling 'micro band-aids' on the wound of inequality that the world is currently nursing.

In this episode of Palestine Studies TV, Dr. Leila Farsakh discussed the implications of the protest movements in the Arab world on Palestinian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dr. Farsakh is a professor of political science at the University of Massachussetts, Boston, and a member of the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

‘Putting Paul Collier, the former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the architects of this folly, in charge of explaining what went wrong with globalisation is akin to putting Attila the Hun in charge of the Ministry of Roman Reconstruction,’ writes Erik S. Reinert in this review of 'The Bottom Billion'.

If Libya goes the way of Western interests, it will be next stop Algeria, says Sukant Chandan.

This blog post points to the exciting potential created by volunteers from thousands of miles away using social networking platforms and free, open source software to create live crisis maps. '...thanks to today’s easy mapping platforms, volunteers can help respond to a crisis from thousands of miles away by collaborating online to create a live map that can be used to support humanitarian operations. They can use social networking platforms to connect, organize, recruit and train.'

Migrant workers around the world started out 2011 by sending home significantly more money than they did in 2010, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Each year, migrant workers send a total of more than US$ 330 billion to their home communities.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

The West is fully in bed with Gaddafi, says Gado.

Focusing on Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon and Zimbabwe, Sokari Ekine provides a round-up of international and social media coverage of the multiple sites of sustained protests across Africa and considers the differences in media attention between each of them.

This preliminary report, which will be presented at the International Council of the World Social Forum, was prepared following the discussion of the strategy committee held at the council session in Dakar in November 2011.

Over the past decade, there has been growing international momentum to conceptualise, document and address the various manifestations of 'armed violence'. To date the discourse has focused largely on the causes and effects of armed violence and explored the range of available programming options to prevent and reduce it. Discussions on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) currently underway in the United Nations (UN) provide an important opportunity to examine armed violence in the context of decisions concerning international transfers and the export and import of conventional arms used in armed violence, says this document from the International Action Network on Small Arms and Amnesty International.

Unrest in Libya has cut off a 3,000km supply route the World Food Programme has used since 2004 to bring food to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians in eastern Chad. 'WFP used the Libya corridor for about 40 per cent of its food aid to Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians,' Jean-Luc Siblot, WFP representative in Chad, told IRIN. When unrest erupted in Libya, 11,000 tons of cereals and pulses were ready for discharge at Libya’s Benghazi port to be transported to eastern Chad. The two vessels carrying food have since been re-routed to Port Sudan, Siblot said.

In a review of Abdul Sheriff’s ‘Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam’, Chambi Chachage urges readers ‘get hold of the book and navigate through its fascinating pages’.

In a distinct echo of the tactics they pursued to encourage US intervention in the Balkans and Iraq, a familiar clutch of neo-conservatives appealed Friday for the United States and NATO to 'immediately' prepare military action to help bring down the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and end the violence that is believed to have killed well over a thousand people in the past week.

'We, actors in the field of alternative information as well as citizen activists who use communication as a tool for social transformation:
Note that, in a global context:
- information is held in a stranglehold by political, economic and industrial forces and is manipulated by the governments and States;
- freedom of expression is being denied, thwarted or repressed;
- there is little or no guarantee for an unfettered access to information for all citizens;
- a violent repression is unleashed upon citizens and actors in the field of information;
- information is being commodified and standardized;
- there is an increasing distrust by public opinion regarding information conveyed by the mainstream media.'

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up, read a comprehensive list of news stories and opinion pieces related to China, India and other emerging powers...

Join New Tactics and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation's Women Peacemakers Program (IFOR/WPP) for an online dialogue on the topic 'Joining Forces: Engaging men as allies in gender-sensitive peacebuilding' from 30 March to 5 April 2011. For more information on the dialogue and how to participate, click on the URL provided.

After a year of fragile and uneven recovery, global economic growth started to decelerate on a broad front in mid-2010, says this UN publication. The slowdown is expected to continue into 2011 and 2012 as weaknesses in major developed economies continue to provide a drag on the global recovery and pose risks for world economic stability in the coming years.

Guinea's President Alpha Conde has told the BBC the military junta that held power before he was elected has left the country bankrupt. Conde said the army leaders had spent more money in two years than in the 50 years from independence in 1958.

More and more evidence is accumulating that a clean and green economy is most likely to deliver a more secure, prosperous and less tumultuous future for humanity, WWF has said. WWF International Director General Jim Leape was commenting on the release of the major United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report 'Towards a Green Economy' which shows that appropriate policies and relatively modest redirections of global investment flows could grow the global economy at equivalent or greater levels than current forecasts.