People in developing countries are suffering disproportionately from this global financial crisis, and international institutions have a long way to go to ensure the financing and mechanisms of assistance that can address this development emergency, writes Professor Ngaire Woods in a policy briefing commissioned by the European Parliament. In many developing countries, what is being crushed and reversed is hard-won progress towards reducing poverty, hunger, and child mortality, and towards increasing primary education, gender parity, access to safe water and sanitation – in short, progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. In this policy briefing, Woods evaluates the responses to the crisis by the IMF, World Bank, G20, and the European Union, and provides a series of recommendations for strengthening the international financial and aid architecture so that it can better respond to the urgent needs of developing countries in deep crisis.

Read the full briefing paper here.

GEG’s latest newsletter is now online, featuring all our latest research activities and publications.

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Why we need a new global economic order: Brazil, the BRICs and the world economy

Henrique Meirelles, Governor Of The Central Bank Of Brazil, will give the GEG Annual Lecture on Tuesday, 3 November 2009 at 5pm in Oxford’s Examination Schools.

Brazil’s voice in the global economic architecture has become increasingly important over the past year. As one of the “BRICS” (Brazil, Russia, India and China), Brazil has been leading the debate as to how global economic institutions must be reformed if the support and engagement of emerging economies in managing the crisis is to be maintained.

The schedule for the Speaker Seminar series (Michaelmas ‘09) has been finalised and is available online.  Please not that the Dead Aid debate, scheduled for 13 November, has been cancelled  and will be scheduled for Hillary Term 2010. Click here to view the schedule.

Refugee protection has historically been characterized by a North-South impasse: while Southern states have had to open their borders to refugees fleeing conflict or human rights abuses in neighboring states, Northern states have had little obligation or incentive to contribute to protecting refugees in the South.  In his new book Protection by Persuasion, Alexander Betts (Director of Global Migration Governance) examines the ways in which UNHCR has sought to foster greater international cooperation within the global refugee regime through special conferences at which Northern states are pushed to contribute to the costs of protection for refugees in the South.  Betts shows that Northern states will contribute to such efforts when they recognize a substantive relationship between refugee protection in the South and their own interests in such issues as security, immigration, and trade.

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In line with the forthcoming (2009) publication of the book ‘The Economics and Politics of Climate Change’ by Helm and Hepburn (eds.) the contribution of Ngaire Woods and Arunabha Ghosh to this book has been published as a GEG Working Paper: ‘Governing climate change: lessons from other governance regimes‘. This paper will also be published by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment as a Smith School working paper.

Professor Ngaire Woods and Dr Devi Sridhar contributed a short piece to the UNA-UK Magazine ‘New World’ (winter 2009) with the title: ‘Do we need a UN agency for HIV/AIDS?’ discussing the benefits of and the concerns surrounding  a UN agency for HIV/AIDS.

Read the full article here

A review of the book ‘The Politics of Aid: African Strategies for Dealing with Donors’ edited by Lindsay Whitfield was published on the website of Foreign Affairs. The book review by Nicolas van de Walle, discusses two books: ”The Politics of Aid: African Strategies for Dealing with Donors’ edited by Lindsay Whitfield and the ‘Smart Aid for African Development’ by Richard Joseph and Alexandra Gillies. In the review, it is argued that these books eschew the broad generalizations and provocative anecdotes that mark most books about aid and instead describe the great variance in outcomes across the continent.

Read the book review in full here.

Alexander Betts and Esra Kaytaz have published a research paper for the UNHCR examining the implications of responses to the Zimbabwean exodus between 2005 and 2009 for the international refugee protection regime. Drawing upon empirical research in South Africa and Bostwana, the paper highlights the inadequacy of the nation and international responses to address the protection needs of Zimbabweans.  The refugee regime needs to adapt by developing a new multilateral normative and institutional framework on subsidiary protection, drawing upon states’ existing commitments under international human rights law.

Read the paper in full here.

Devi Sridhar and Professor David Craig (Auckland) are editing a special issue of Social Science & Medicine on ‘Global Health Assistance: Qualitative Evidence on What Works and Why’. Please find further details and the call for papers under CFP Global health assistance-1