The European Action Day is an initiative of the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ – a European network bringing together over 250 civil society organisations present in 15 European countries to take measures that will stop corporate abuses and provide access to justice for victims of these abuses. 'From mercury poisoning in South Africa to child labour in India, companies, including European ones, continue to get away with breaches of environmental and human rights standards,' states Ruth Casals, ECCJ’s coordinator.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn called recent agreements reached on IMF governance reform 'historic'. However, a closer analysis reveals that the shifts in votes are smaller than claimed and though the basic power structure of the IMF will better incorporate large emerging markets, it will also continue to see dominance of the US and Europe, says the Bretton Woods Project.

World leaders have an historic opportunity to reform the global economy to ensure that the one in six people who live in extreme poverty benefit from economic recovery, international agency Oxfam said today ahead of the G20 summit in Seoul. Oxfam is calling on the G20 to forge a new Seoul Development Consensus to replace the failed Washington Consensus of the past. The new consensus should combine financial support for health, education and poor farmers in developing countries with action to make the global economy work in the interests of poor countries.

This South Centre report argues that the G20 agenda misses some of the key issues that need to be dealt with in order to effectively reform the international monetary system so as to avert future global financial crises. The missing issues include enforceable exchange rate and adjustment obligations, orderly sovereign debt workout mechanisms and the reform of the international reserves system. The paper also points out that there are no effective rules to control the unstable global financial market, no multilateral discipline over misguided monetary and exchange rate policies, and national policy makers are preoccupied with resolving crises by supporting those responsible for these crises rather than introducing measures to prevent future crises.

The United States will continue its support for efforts by the Malian government in the fight against terrorist threats in the north of the country, said the US envoy with the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), Rashad Hussain, at the end of his 5 to 7 November visit to Mali. 'We support Mali in terms of training and military maneuvers. The process that has been underway for some time will continue,' Hussain said, adding that 'terrorist threats are cross-border threats that claim victims.'

The current turmoil in the world economy has demonstrated once again that the international arrangements lack mechanisms to prevent financial crises with global repercussions, writes Yilmaz Akyüz, the special economic adviser of the South Centre. Not only are effective rules and regulations absent to bring inherently unstable international financial market and capital flows under control, but there is no multilateral discipline over misguided monetary, financial and exchange rate policies in systemically important countries despite their disproportionately large adverse international spillovers.

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.

Since the workers from Vale, Brazil’s giant mining company, started to drink at his bar, fortune has favoured Mario Sálimo. With business growing week by week, the 47-year-old has opened extra rooms, added a restaurant and installed a dance floor. At weekends Mario’s Bar, near the clogged and dusty centre of Tete, is open until five or six o’clock in the morning. And the bar is not the only thing booming in this remote Mozambican town, which grew up as a trading post on the Zambezi river. Tete sits directly above one of the world’s largest reserves of high-quality coal.

The poor countries must have an exit policy away from aid dependency especially since the North will be cutting their aid as a result of the global crisis. Moreover, the South and its political leaders must think more for themselves, listen to their own experts and redefine development. This message was conveyed by South Centre chairman Benjamin Mkapa at the closing ceremony of the conference on the Global Economy in Beijing on 4 August.

In her recent book on the history of Columbia’s death squads, Jasmin Hristov has argued that neoliberalism needs the squads, and the resulting inequality would have been impossible to maintain without them. Hristov notes that death squad violence 'is purposefully directed towards sectors of society that stand in the way of the ruling class’s efforts to maintain economic dominance and acquire more resources to make even more profit. The upper classes so fear political organising among the poor, who could mount a formidable opposition to the status quo if allowed to organise unrestrained by state repression.' In the wake of political assassinations in South African provinces, Jane Duncan, the Highway Africa Chair of Media and Information Society at Rhodes University, looks at how serious the problem is.

Indian buyers who visited the country last week to seal diamond deals have pledged to lobby their government to endorse Zimbabwe's gems ahead of the Kimberley Process meeting scheduled for Israel early next month. Surat Rough Diamond Sourcing India Limited said it would put its weight behind Zimbabwe as the KP meets in Jerusalem, Israel next Monday to determine whether Zimbabwe should be allowed sell its diamonds from Marange.

'If Kyoto entered history as the city where the climate accord was born, Nagoya will be remembered as the city where the biodiversity accord was born,' said Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). He was commenting the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP-10) that concluded 29 October in Nagoya, Japan. Upbeat assessments highlight that COP-10 achieved three inter-linked goals: adoption of a new ten-year Strategic Plan to guide international and national efforts to save biodiversity through enhanced action to meet the objectives of the CBD; a resource mobilisation strategy that provides the way forward to a substantial increase to current levels of official development assistance (ODA) in support of biodiversity; and a new international protocol on access to and sharing of the benefits from the use of the genetic resources of the planet.

At the wealth spectrum’s uppermost reaches, just over 1,000 billionaires and another 80,000 'ultra high net worth individuals' worth over $50 million each. At other end of the global spectrum sit three billion people - 'more than two thirds of the global adult population' – with an average wealth per adult less than $10,000, reveals a new report.

After four days of conferences, workshops and cultural activities, the World Education Forum in Palestine ended this afternoon with an assembly bringing together Palestinian and international educators and social justice activists from diverse sectors. Participants at the assembly reflected on the past few days and discussed how to take the various proposals coming out of the forum forward. Three main topics were discussed: how to build an education movement in Palestine, the future of international solidarity with Palestine, and learning from the experiences of other social forums.

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up:
- Africa is painting a distorted picture of economic progress
- Chinese enterprises shoulder social responsibilities in Africa
- China on multi-billion dollar projects in Zimbabwe
- Rwanda reaches out to Indian businesses
- Indian Companies Push into Africa
- SA urged not to be ‘obsessed’ with Bric

In this week's edition of the Emerging Powers News Round-Up:
- Africa is painting a distorted picture of economic progress
- Chinese enterprises shoulder social responsibilities in Africa
- China on multi-billion dollar projects in Zimbabwe
- Rwanda reaches out to Indian businesses
- Indian Companies Push into Africa
- SA urged not to be ‘obsessed’ with Bric

The world education forum will be held in Palestine from 28 - 30 October 2010 as a part of the World Social Forum. Due to the regional situation activists and organisations from the Arab region are restrained from participation in the forum in Palestine, therefore there will be a parallel forum in Lebanon. The forum aims to highlight the necessity of education in the development process and to provide an arena for the exchange of ideas on education and the curriculum.

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, has announced that it wants to attract more white voters. Tim Murithi says this would require the adoption of a more inclusive ‘nation-building’ and non-racial posture.

The Child Protection and Trafficking site is intended to help unpack some of the myths around human trafficking and child safety in South Africa. Media Monitoring Africa is working with children, journalists and non-governmental organisations to try and create a better understanding of the issues involved, and what we can do to tackle modern slavery.

The aim of this book is to encourage and stimulate a more informed debate on reforming the global finance. It examines recent developments and problems afflicting the global financial system. From a developing country perspective, it enunciates guiding principles and offers concrete policy measures to create a more stable, equitable and sustainable global financial system.