Rich Countries Seek to Block UN From Working on Global Finance Reforms #p2 #tcot @dloesch

"An important fight between rich countries and developing countries over the question of UN involvement in researching and advocating for a new global financial architecture has spilled into the open in the weeks leading up to the April 21-26 quadrennial ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). At issue are apparent efforts by the rich countries to water down and block the key planks of UNCTAD's proposed work plan related to needed reforms in finance and the global financial architecture. The proposed work agenda for the next four years is set to be approved in Doha. However, in an unprecedented step, nearly 50 former UNCTAD officials and staff recently issued a public letter of concern expressing alarm at the degree of pressure being placed on UNCTAD by the industrialized countries, which have long been critical of UNCTAD's policy advice to developing nations. According to trade officials from developing countries, industrialized countries such as the United States and the EU believe that UNCTAD's advice on finance, environment, food security, intellectual property rights and development clashes with their agenda for free trade and free markets.

As currently drafted, UNCTAD's next four-year work plan outlines its proposed research and policy advice on subjects including the current economic recession, exchange rate misalignments, the volatility and financialization of commodity markets, special and differential treatment for developing countries, regional financial and monetary cooperation, and the need for the reform of the international financial and economic architecture. UNCTAD has called for a paradigmatic shift to development-oriented growth that would bring about sustainable and inclusive economic and social change in the world's least-developed countries (LDCs), including a host of alternative macroeconomic development policies and a range of broad reforms to the global financial architecture."

rest at http://truth-out.org/news/item/8609-rich-countries-seek-to-block-un-from-working-on-global-finance-reforms