The World Trade Organization will be holding its 12th Ministerial Meeting in Geneva from June 12 to 15.  Yet little if anything is expected from the meeting except the usual exchanges of conflicting views between representatives of the global North and those of the global South.  There might be something like a “Ministerial Declaration” that tries to paper over differences with some conciliatory language, but anything resembling a consensus on any key issue is unlikely.  Consensus is the prime decision-making method in the WTO, and it’s been a long, long time since there was consensus achieved on anything related to global trade rules.

Read Walden Bello’s article

At the Stockholm+50 international conference in Sweden early June, UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed deep disappointment over the failure of rich nations to provide financing to mitigate the devastating consequences of climate change, including droughts, floods, heat waves, pollution and biodiversity loss worldwide.

The shortfall in funding has also derailed the implementation of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including poverty and hunger eradication, by 2030.

Read the article by Thalif Deen

OECD countries might discover it is in their self-interest to join developing countries in pursuing truly global, UN-led tax solutions.

Read the new publication by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

Food crises, economic stagnation and price increases are worsening unevenly, almost everywhere, following the Ukraine war. Sanctions against Russia have especially hurt those relying on wheat and fertilizer imports.

Unilateral sanctions illegal
Unilateral sanctions – not approved by the UN Security Council – are illegal under international law. Besides contravening the UN Charter, unilateral sanctions inflict much human loss. Countless civilians – many far from target countries – are at risk, depriving them of much, even life itself.

Sanctions, embargos and blockades – ‘sold’ as non-violent alternatives to waging war by military means – economically isolate and punish targeted countries, supposedly to force them to acquiesce. But most sanctions hurt the innocent majority, much more than ruling elites.

Read the article by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury

For the last 40 years, a rising tide of inequality has swept across much of the globe, reversing the achievement of peak equality in many nations in the early postwar decades. Today most rich countries are significantly more unequal than half a century ago.

The trigger for this shift from the dominant postwar philosophy of egalitarianism was an assumption of power by a coterie of small-state, ‘free market’, anti-equality thinkers. For these neoliberal evangelists, equality had gone too far, while faster economic progress, it was said, depended on bigger rewards at the top and accumulation of much larger private fortunes. Although these pro-capital doctrines were applied most forcefully in Anglo-Saxon countries, neoliberalism infected policy-making across much of the globe.

Read the article by Stewart Lansley

US and allied economic sanctions against Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine have not achieved their declared objectives. Instead, they are worsening economic stagnation and inflation worldwide. Worse, they are exacerbating hunger, especially in Africa.

Unless approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), sanctions are not authorized by international law. With Russia’s veto in the UNSC, unilateral sanctions by the US and its allies have surged following the Ukraine invasion. But sanctions cut both ways.

Read the article by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury

Our planet is facing a triple crisis of climate, nature and pollution, with one common cause—the fossil-fuel economy. Oil, gas and coal are at the root of runaway climate disruption, widespread biodiversity loss and pervasive plastic pollution. The conclusion is clear and must be paramount when political leaders gather in Stockholm this week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Any effort to address these existential threats to human and ecological health will mean little as long as the fossil-fuel economy remains intact.

Read more in Social Europe

On the interconnectedness with social justice, on some paradoxical consequences for the peace movement, on borders and global public goods, on nationalisml and sovereignty …

Lessons from the war in Ukraine | Meer

Guy Rider at the opening of the Labour Conference