English Deutsch Español Portugues Français
Weitzenegger & Kons. > en > newsletter
sic!


''The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.''

September 2004

The monthly Newsletter brings you News for International Cooperation Professionals.
Edited by Karsten Weitzenegger.
Comments and suggestions: editor @ weitzenegger.de

Content
  1. News
  2. Reports
  3. Training and events
  4. Services
  5. Databases
  6. Publications
  7. Websites

1. News

Joseph E Stiglitz calls for a true Development Round of trade negotiations
In a new report commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat, Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz has launched a broad critique of the post Doha Development Round of trade talks, which he argues does not truly represent the interests of developing countries. http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=38180

e-Newsletter on development issues in the enlarged EU
TRIALOG in association with CONCORD offers an e-Newsletter to strengthen dialogue and partnerships between development NGOs in accession countries, EU countries and developing countries. http://www.trialog.or.at/docs/tis_27-05-04.pdf

Can Entrepreneurship Break the Vicious Cycle of Poverty?
In a dgPoverty highlight on Entrepreneurship, we feature an article by Miguel Jaramillo and Sandro Parodi, economists specialized on youth and labor issues. The authors address how entrepreneurship programs can help young people in the developing world that face great difficulties in labour market inclusion to break the cycle of poverty. http://topics.developmentgateway.org/poverty/highlights/viewHighlight.do?activeHighlightId=101200


2. Reports

Human Development Report 2004: Cultural Liberty in Today's Diverse World
Accommodating people's growing demands for their inclusion in society, for respect of their ethnicity, religion, and language, takes more than democracy and equitable growth. Also needed are multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping their culture--so that all people can choose to be who they are. The authors argue that all people have the right to maintain their ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities. They further contend that the adoption of policies that recognise and protect these identities is the only sustainable approach to development in diverse societies. Economic globalisation cannot succeed unless cultural freedoms are also respected and protected. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/

Global Monitoring Report 2004
Policies and Actions for Achieving the Millennium Development Goals and Related Outcomes
The turn of the century was marked by some significant and promising events for world development. The Millennium Declaration - signed by 189 countries in September 2000 - led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, which set clear targets for eradicating poverty and other sources of human deprivation. Following other major international meetings came broad agreement on the goals and strategies to achieve them. The task now is implementation - to translate vision into action. Drawing attention to priorities for action and related accountabilities, the new Global Monitoring Report provides an integrated assessment of the policies and actions needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Produced in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international partners, the Report assesses how the various parties, developing countries, developed countries, and international financial institutions are playing their part under the agreed development partnership and highlights progress on the development policy agenda.
http://www.worldbankinfoshop.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=3877360

Promoting Entrepreneurship and Innovative SMEs in a Global Economy
This 40+ page Report summarizes the Background Reports prepared by OECD for the Ministerial Conference on SME innovation. It discusses the role of Small and Medium Enterprises in the innovation system and sets out policy recommendations for how governments can enable SME innovation. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/24/31919590.pdf

Doing Business in 2005
This report, the second in an annual Bank series, is titled ''Removing Obstacles to Growth'' and features the Top 10 Reformer Countries and the Top 20 Economies for Doing Business. The series is designed to investigate the scope and manner of regulations that enhance or constrain business activity. Quantitative indicators on business regulations and their enforcement can be compared, over a period of time, across 145 countries. Similar to the 2004 report, indicators cover topics such as starting a business, hiring and firing workers, enforcing contracts, obtaining credit, and closing a business. The 2005 edition has added two additional topics; registering property and protecting investors.
http://publications.worldbank.org/ecommerce/catalog/product?item_id=1384970

2003 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE)
ARDE 2003 examines the effectiveness of World Bank support for developing country policy reform. Policy reform has become a central element of the Bank's strategy for sustainable poverty reduction. The report finds that reform has been widespread across countries during the last few years and across a wide spectrum of policy areas. Countries that improved their policies over this period -- on average - achieved substantially higher per-capita economic growth than those that did not. http://www.worldbank.org/oed/arde2003/


3. Training and events

Training Materials for eGovernment Workshops/Courses
Web-based guidance on planning a workshop or training course on e-government. Provides structure and online materials that can be varied to fit anything from a half-day to a four-day training period. Richard Heeks, IDPM, University of Manchester. http://www.egov4dev.org/topic1train.htm

''Relations between Development Banks and Commercial Banks: Cooperation or Competition ?''
This expert meeting will be organized on 4/5 November 2004 by KfW Bankengruppe (KfW banking group) and the Latin American Association of Development Finance Institutions (ALIDE). German and European as well as Latin American institutions are invited to present their responses to the new challenges on the basis of the current developments in the international financial markets. Exchanging approaches and experiences on this topic is of great significance for the ongoing restructuring processes in the banking sector in many Latin American countries. The conference will be held in Frankfurt/Main (Germany).
http://www.kfw-entwicklungsbank.de/EN/Fachinformationen/FinancialS15/Events29/ExpertMeet.jsp

Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)
ETI is an alliance of companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade union organisations. They exist to promote and improve the implementation of corporate codes of practice which cover supply chain working conditions. Their ultimate goal is to ensure that the working conditions of workers producing for the UK market meet or exceed international labour standards. The Resources section contains ETI publications and reports, and a selection of other resources which are grouped thematically. In particular, in includes a list of resources relating to each of the ETI Base Code principles, and information about labour issues in different countries and regions. http://www.ethicaltrade.org


4. Services

DIRECTConnect - New helpdesk service for donors who fund microfinance.
CGAP - The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor has launched a new helpdesk service designed specifically for donor staff. http://www.cgapdirect.org/

Country and Regional Search Engines
This site's creator, Phil Bradley, has continued to add new listings, and he's now up to 2,086 search engines in 216 countries, territories and regions. This is the site to visit if you want to search for a mining company in Mongolia, a falconry club in Estonia, a restaurant in Antigua, or just about anything else. http://www.philb.com/countryse.htm

Financing free access to research publications
As the US and UK governments produce reports on free access to all their funded research, Eldis follows the developments and their implications for Southern publishers and researchers as part of the new ICT for Development Weblog at Eldis. http://www.eldis.org/ict

PovcalNet: An Interactive Computational Tool for Poverty Data
Web-based interactive computational tool that anyone can use to replicate calculations made by World Bank researchers in estimating the extent of absolute poverty in the world. Developed by the Bank's Research Group, the tool also enables users to calculate poverty measures under different assumptions (such as by varying poverty line or PPP values) and to assemble the estimates using alternative country groupings. PovcalNet is self-contained with reliable built-in software that does real-time calculations from an annually updated database. To try the tool, please visit http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/jsp/index.jsp

Latin American Periodical Tables of Contents (LAPTOC)
The LAPTOC service is a special project of the Association of Research Libraries Latin Americanist Research Resources Project. It provides free access to a searchable database of tables of contents and references to articles published in over 800 journals relating to Latin American studies which are held by libraries who are members of the project. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/arl/laptoc.html


5. Databases

Agricultural Market Access Database (AMAD)
The purpose of this database is to provide a common data set on tariffs, TRQs and imports, as well as the tools for researchers, policymakers, and others to use in analyzing levels of tariff protection in agriculture among WTO Members. The development and use of a common data set can assist in improving international transparency of agricultural trade as covered by multilateral rules and disciplines. The database is also intended to be a public good available to all users. The database includes mainly raw data on market access commitments and trade, as found in WTO members' commitments and in national publications, at the level of detail and disaggregation found in the original sources. http://www.amad.org

Alternative Information and Development Centre
The Alternative Information and Development Centre is a South African NGO working in the context of globalisation, together with popular organisations and social movements in South and Southern Africa, for economic justice and social transformation. http://aidc.org.za

International Donor Directory
The ForeignAID.com International Donor Directory Online features 700+ donors in the U.S., Europe, and abroad actively involved in grantmaking for international programs. Gain immediate access to hundreds of donors that are interested in funding your cause: HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, environment, population, women's empowerment, microfinance, community development, and civil society, to name a few. http://www.foreignaid.com/foundations_db/

German ''Institutions in Development Co-operation'', 9th edition of the directory
The directory compiled by InWEnt gives an overview over the most important German organisations and over representatives of international organisations in Germany. It can be ordered via InWEnt at: http://www.dse.de/zd/zdp.htm (only in German)

Entrepreneurship Inventory
There is growing evidence of a significant causal relationship between entrepreneurship, economic growth and poverty reduction. Small, micro and medium-sized enterprises (SMMEs) are often the backbone of the private sector in the developing world, creating jobs and providing a tax base for local government. And frequently SMMEs offer the only employment available to millions of poor people. Yet many developing countries have been unable to create and maintain the favourable environment needed to foster SMME development. This papers analyzes the initiatives to improve this situation, ant the role of ICT on it. It also has a huge directory on entrepreneurship related resources. http://www.bridges.org/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurship_inventory.pdf

The World Gazetteer
This site provides information about current population of countries, their administrative divisions, cities and towns as well as images of the current national flags. You can access the data by clicking on a specific country on the left site. Summary statistics like the largest cities, additional information and help can be accessed http://www.world-gazetteer.com/home.htm


6. Publications

How to became independent as a Consultant
The first mailing of the Swiss cinfo Roster by Michèle Mercier deals with the issue of becoming independent. You are encouraged to provide feedback on the mailing and share your own experiences and tips and tricks on this issue in the cinfoRoster Forum. Michèle Mercier, author of the mailing, will be moderating the discussion in the cinfoRoster Forum and provide further food for thoughts and individualised feedback.
http://www.cinfo.ch/cinforoster/english/files/mailing04-01.pdf

Influential Evaluations: Evaluations that Improved Performance and Impacts of Development Programs
This World Bank OED study presents examples of 8 evaluations that had a significant impact. For many of them, it has been possible to compare their costs with the benefits which they provided, and to show that the evaluation was a highly cost-effective management tool. http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/oed/oeddoclib.nsf/24cc3bb1f94ae11c85256808006a0046/67433ec6c181c22385256e7f0073ba1c/$FILE/influential_evaluations_ecd.pdf

Reshaping Local Democracy through Participatory Governance
Environment&Urbanization Brief - 9/ 2004, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), Are local governments able to give more power to poorer groups? And support their capacities for action and partnerships? Can the urban poor make creative contributions to better urban management? The last ten years have seen many local governments, citizen groups and social movements developing more participatory ways of working together. Much has been made possible by more democratic and decentralized government structures and by bottom-up pressures. Even more has been made possible by citizens and civil society organizations demonstrating coherent and realistic alternative approaches to development. This Brief describes some of these new approaches and assesses their effectiveness'
http://www.iied.org/docs/urban/eu_brief09.pdf


7. Websites

Youth Employment Network (YEN)
YEN was created in partnership with the World Bank, UN, and ILO to develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work. The YEN's Website has sections for events, resources, projects and a Best Practice Database. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/yen/index.htm

Read newspapers at NEWSPAPERS.COM
There are thousands of newspapers available on the Web, and you'll find the one you want in seconds at this site. You can search by keyword, or by category (USA, International, Top 10, Business, Entertainment, Religious, etc.). You can also search college newspapers, movie listings and reviews, weather reports, and more. http://www.newspapers.com

The World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO)
WANGO is an international membership organization uniting NGOs worldwide in the cause of advancing peace and global well-being. WANGO helps to provide the mechanism and support needed for NGOs to connect, partner, share, inspire, and multiply their contributions to solve humanity's basic problems. http://www.wango.org


Tell A Friend!
Your Name:

Your E-mail:

Your Friend's E-mail:

Your Comments:



  Search WWW Search weitzenegger.de
 Powered by Google   More Search

 Free monthly Newsletter
 
 Powered by groups.yahoo.com | Newsletter Archive
© 2001-2005 Karsten Weitzenegger |
|
BACK TOP SITEMAP SEARCH Disclaimer SEARCH SITEMAP BACK TOP NEXT