Economic Security, Livelihood Issues And Labor Publications and Resources

The Crisis of Multilateralism
September 14, 2024 - Walden Bello, Foreign Policy In Focus
Both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are in trouble. They are running out of money to lend. And, though both institutions are reaching out to civil society, representatives of nongovernmental organizations are banned from their fall meeting in Singapore.

The Fund is searching for a new role and a new governance structure. But proposals such as linking voting weight to GDP are mired in controversy. The Bank, meanwhile, is groaning under the weight of a huge bureaucracy. The crisis of these two institutions combine to make a crisis for multilateralism in general.  Read publication...

The Other Oil War: Halliburton's Agenda at the WTO
June 1, 2025 - Victor Menotti, International Forum on Globalization
A Policy Brief on the Energy Services negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO)

Rich nations are trying to use the WTO to create a new global policy framework for "energy security" that would fundamentally redefine, under the logic of "free trade in services," who will access energy resources, which ones are used and how, and who will benefit most from their exploitation.  Read publication...

The Hijacking of the Development Debate - How Friedman and Sachs Got It Wrong
August 1, 2025 - Robin Broad and John Cavanagh, World Policy Journal
Just a half decade after protests by citizen groups in Latin America and elsewhere discredited two decades of market-oriented neoliberal dogma, Friedman and Sachs have narrowed the debate with simplistic slogans of “more aid” and “more trade.” They have done so by putting forward myths about the poor, economic development, and the global economy.  Read publication...

The Unfinished Agenda on International Debt
July 14, 2025 - Jubilee USA Network, Jubilee USA Network
In July 2005, world leaders gathered in Gleneagles, Scotland, and announced a plan to cancel debts, increase foreign aid, and make changes to international trade policy. At the time, Jubilee USA Network responded to the announcement by the G-8 on additional debt cancellation by welcoming it as an important first step on a long journey. One year later, it is important to look back and take stock. On the positive side, some debts have been cancelled for 21 nations, and the money is being put to good use. But much more remains to be done: 9 out of 10 people in the developing world will see no benefit from the 2005 debt deal. A broader, Jubilee cancellation of debts is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals and to cancel odious and illegitimate debts. This policy brief looks at the progress of the past year, and outlines the unfinished agenda on international debt ahead of the 2007 Sabbath Year.  Read publication...

The United States vs China: the war for oil
June 15, 2025 - Paul Rogers, OpenDemocracy.org
The United States's focus on the middle east, al-Qaida and terrorism is also a surrogate for long-term strategic competition with China for the world's oil resources.  Read publication...

State of Negotiations and WTO’s Exclusive June Mini-Ministerial
June 16, 2025 - Aileen Kwa, Focus on the Global South
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Solidarity Economics
April 27, 2025 - Ethan Miller, Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Collective
Strategies for Building New Economies From the Bottom-Up and the Inside-Out  Read publication...

U.S. Hegemony or Global Good Neighbor Policy?
February 1, 2025 - Laura Carlsen and Tom Barry, International Relations Center
Over the past few years we have faced two major challenges in conceiving of a new foreign policy in Latin America. The first is the relative lack of attention to the region, by both the U.S. government and public. The second is the increasing friction between the current U.S. administration's strategies for global U.S. hegemony and Latin American elected governments and grassroots trends toward greater independence and new models. The following policy review of U.S.-Latin American relations examines the salient new developments in Latin America and the Caribbean and U.S. policy in the region. It concludes with general guidelines for a more coherent and constructive U.S. Latin American policy in the region, along the lines of the “Global Good Neighbor Ethic for U.S. Foreign Policy.”  Read publication...

The Economics of Outsourcing: How Should Policy Respond?
March 2, 2025 - Thomas Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
Outsourcing is a central element of economic globalization, representing a new form of competition. Responding to outsourcing calls for policies that enhance national competitiveness and establish rules ensuring acceptable forms of competition. Viewing outsourcing through the lens of competition connects with early 20th century American institutional economics. The policy challenge is to construct institutions that ensure stable, robust flows of demand and income, thereby addressing the Keynesian problem while preserving incentives for economic action. This was the approach embedded in the New Deal, which successfully addressed the problems of the Depression era. Global outsourcing poses the challenge anew and calls for creative institutional arrangements to shape the nature of competition.  Read publication...

Brazil and the Difficult Path to Multilateralism
March 8, 2025 - Raul Zibechi, International Relations Center - America's Program
Brazil's rise as a regional and world power that champions multilateralism is being met with domestic and international obstacles. In addition to the resistance of the United States, Brazil has left a bitter taste in the mouth of its own neighbors who feel its steamroller-like advances are creating a new disequilibrium on the subcontinent. The domestic problems of Brazil - a country that has won "the world championship of inequality" - are spilling over as the country aspires to become a major player on the international scene. Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org).  Read publication...

China Copes with Globalization - a mixed review
January 15, 2025 - Dale Wen, Visiting Scholar, International Forum on Globalization
This primer intends to serve as a briefing on the implications of China’s evolving role in the global economy and help build bridges and greater understanding between emerging social movements in China and international civil society.  Read publication...

The Doha Deception Round: a recipe for unemployment
December 2, 2024 - {Civil Society signatories]
Over a hundred social movements, trade unions and NGOs release a statement on the employment and unemployment effects of the present WTO negotiations.  Read publication...

Why the EU and the and the USA must reform their subsidies, or pay the price
November 30, 2024 - Oxfam International
Oxfam releases a new paper that shows that a variety of US & EU agriculture subsidies are likely violating WTO rules and are vulnerable to challenge... For the US and EU, the message is that the status quo is not be defensible; morally or legally. US & EU farm programs risk being picked apart by legal challenges. To prevent this unhappy scenario, rich countries must dig much deeper to reform farm subsidies and offer more opportunity to developing countries. Otherwise, the Doha Round will offer little “development” and may not succeed. What is on the negotiating table thus far is not enough.  Read publication...

Doha Round’s Development Impacts: Shrinking Gains and Real Costs
October 1, 2024 - Timothy A. Wise and Kevin P. Gallagher, RIS Policy Briefs
RIS, the India-based Research and Information System for Developing Countries, has published a policy brief by GDAE's Tim Wise and Kevin Gallagher analyzing the limited gains projected for developing countries from further WTO agreements and highlighting some of the hidden costs of WTO measures.  Read publication...

Global Civil Society 2005/6
November 28, 2024 - Marlies Glasius, Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier, Sage Publications
Global Civil Society 2005/6 tackles contentious and pertinent issues shaping the growing global consciousness of the 21st century: climate change, labour migration, gender and reform of the United Nations. In addition, this scholarly yet accessible annual publication analyses the infrastructure of global civil society – the extent of its connectedness, the use of new technology and the nature of the social forum phenomenon. A collaboration between the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Civil Society at University of California Los Angeles, the Global Civil Society Yearbook is the standard work on the topic, indispensable for activists, social scientists, students, policy makers and journalists.  Read publication...

Is the WTO the only way?
October 24, 2024
Safeguarding Multilateral Environmental Agreements from international trade rules and settling trade and environment disputes outside the WTO. A briefing paper published by Adelphi Consult, Friends of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace.  Read publication...

Four Economic Issues That Environmentalists Should Care About
September 21, 2024 - MARK WEISBROT, Center for Economica and Policy Research
Paper for SierraSummit 2005, September 8-11, 2005, San Francisco 1. The American versus the European Model 2. “Free Trade” and “Free Markets” versus Protectionism: Who Wants What? 3. Falling Birth Rates in High-Income Countries: Should We Be Worried? 4. The Cost of Reducing Global Climate Change  Read publication...

Sorting Out the DDA End Process
June 20, 2025 - Trade Reports International Group, Washington Trade Daily
Volume 14, Number 121 Friday, June 20, 2025 Geneva – A dozen capital-based senior trade officials today will be asked by the European Union to provide some indication as to how far they can go in advancing all the pillars of the Doha Development Agenda work program  Read publication...

Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a new Road by Walking
May 19, 2025 - Deborah James, Common Dreams
On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.  Read publication...

Bush at OAS: Same Old “Free Trade” Tune
June 8, 2025 - Deborah James, Common Dreams
This weekend, foreign ministers and ambassadors of 34 nations of the western hemisphere met in Ft Lauderdale, Florida at the 35th meeting of the Organization of American States. The meeting occurs during a time of major shifts in the relationship of the US with Latin America, particularly the erosion of US domination in the region due to a growing resentment of US double standards on democracy, and the growing rejection of the “Washington Consensus” economic model of corporate globalization in the region.  Read publication...

World Social Forum Funder Delegation Report
March 1, 2025 - Mark Randazzo, Funders Network on Trade and Globalization
Excerpts from a report of FNTG's funder delegation to the WSF 2005.  Read publication...

Proxy Season Preview Spring 2005
April 20, 2025 - As You Sow Foundation
Helping Foundations Align Mission And Investment - This booklet is intended to make foundations more aware of important upcoming proxy votes and highlights social and environmental issues that are directly relevant to the missions of foundations.  Read publication...

Choike at the World Social Forum
February 8, 2025 - Choike: A Portal on Southern Civil Societies, a project of the Third World Institute
In this report Choike offers articles, discussions from previous regional forums, news, debates and background information on the World Social Forum 2005. Coverage was also provided during the development of this event.  Read publication...

Integrating Human Rights into the Future of Agriculture Trade Policy
January 3, 2025
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Practical Guide to the WTO
December 10, 2024
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The WTO in 2004: a year in review
December 16, 2024 - Alexandra Strickner and Carin Smaller, Institute for Trade and Agriculture Policy
A comprehensive overview from IATP's Trade Information Project in Geneva, including negotiations and challenges for 2005.  Read publication...

GLOBAL RECOVERY UNDER WAY, BUT WITH TROUBLED OUTLOOK
September 27, 2024 - UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
The situation of the global economy and the outlook for developing countries is brighter than a year ago. But there is a risk that the unequal distribution of demand, the impact of higher oil prices and pressures on the dollar could lead to greater exchange-rate and financial instability and a slowdown of growth, concludes UNCTAD´s Trade and Development Report 2004.  Read publication...

From Keynesianism to Neoliberalism: Shifting Paradigms in Economics
May 6, 2025 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
Thomas I. Palley is the chief economist at the U.S.-China Security Review Commission. This essay will appear as a chapter in a book by Deborah Johnston and Alfredo Saad-Filho, eds., Neoliberalism--A Critical Reader ).  Read publication...

FTAA: Health Hazard for the Americas?
November 16, 2024 - Ellen R. Shaffer, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Americas face critical threats to health, including crises in access to health care, water and other vital human services; re-emerging but preventable fatal diseases; the advance of AIDS; and biohazards. Imbalances in wealth and power undermine equity between and within nations. Addressing these crises is a high priority, and requires effective, cooperative international efforts. The draft Free Trade Area of the Americas is likely to worsen these problems, and to challnge countries’ domestic regulations, including those proven effective in advancing and protecting public health. This report presents issues and concerns related to the impact of the FTAA on democracy, public health and health care in the Americas. It reviews the arguments for and against liberalizing trade in health services, inequalities in health and wealth in the Americas, with a case study of Peru, and presents recommendations.  Read publication...

Call for Public Health Accountability in International Trade Agreements
November 16, 2024 - Joe Brenner, CPATH (Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health)
The Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) threatens measures that protect health, provide access to medications, and assure the safety and affordability of vital human services, including health care, water, education and energy. Under the FTAA, vital human services are tradable commodities. The statement, signed by public health and health advocates, establishes the priority of health over commercial concerns, and calls for transparent and accountable fair trade negotiations that exclude vital human services.  Read publication...

Dogmatic Development - Privatisation and conditionalities in six countries
March 1, 2025 - War on Want
This report looks at how conditionalities and pressures from aid agencies and development banks force developing countries to adopt privatisation policies in public services.  Read publication...

The Right to Water
March 1, 2025 - Jim Shultz, The Democracy Center
Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity. Water, and water facilities and services, must be affordable for all.

--UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, November 2002

What does it take to translate these noble words into reality for the poor of Latin America and the world? This is the question addressed in this article and in a forthcoming book 'Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Latin America: From Theory to Practice.'  Read publication...

A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All
February 24, 2025 - World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, International Labour Organization (ILO)
Globalization can and must change, says a new, groundbreaking report presented today to the International Labour Organization (ILO) urging that building a fair and inclusive globalization become a worldwide priority. This report, issued by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, calls for an "urgent rethink" of current policies and institutions of global governance.  Read publication...

Sustainable Industrial Development: The Performance of Mexico’s FDI-Led Strategy
February 19, 2025 - Kevin P. Gallagher and Lyuba Zarsky, Global Development and Environment Institute/Tufts University
A new policy report, and a short policy brief that concisely summarizes the larger report, provide an economic analysis of the industrial development model promoted by Mexico, and draws out lessons for Mexican development, the Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations, and the Doha Development Round.  Read publication...

"FTAA-Lite" Reflects Long-Term Economic Failure
November 24, 2024 - Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
It was clear to anyone who followed the negotiations closely in Miami that the ministerial meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was at least as much of a failure as the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun in September. The difference was that this time the U.S. and Brazil papered over their differences in front of the cameras.  Read publication...

São Paulo Declaration
October 30, 2024 - Socialist International
At its recent Congress in São Paulo, Brazil, the Socialist International issued a final declaration under the heading 'The Return of Politics: For just and responsible global governance - For globalisation governed by the people'.  Read publication...

Water, Land and Labour: The Impacts of Forced Privatization in Vulnerable Communities
July 1, 2025 - Derek MacCuish, Halifax Initiative Coalition and Social Justice Committee, Canada
Privatization of public services and natural resource extraction is a standard condition for the World Bank/ IMF debt relief program. This survey of cases of privatization globally illustrates the repeated hazards associated with forced privatization, and challenges arguments of efficiency and economic growth made by the international financial institutions.  Read publication...

Investing in Destruction: The Impacts of a WTO Investment Agreement on Extractive Industries in Developing Countries
June 1, 2025
This report shows how a WTO investment treaty would exacerbate the social and environmental problems associated with extractive industries in developing countries. The report above all makes a strong case for keeping investment rules off of the WTO's agenda.  Read publication...

Immigration Accord On Hold While Failed Border Enforcement Policies Continue
June 16, 2025 - Walter A. Ewing, Immigration Policy Center
As illustrated by events surrounding the visit of Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez to Washington in May, the U.S.-Mexico relationship has deteriorated considerably since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.  Read publication...

Human Development Report 2003
July 9, 2025 - UN Development Programme
The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.  Read publication...

NAFTA's Untold Stories: Mexico's Response to North American Integration
June 10, 2025 - Timothy A. Wise, Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center
Although some policymakers still point to Mexico as a success story, there is a growing consensus that its free trade experiment has not lived up to expectations. Results of nine case studies published in the book Confronting Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance in Mexico illustrate implications for a host of new trade agreements now under consideration.  Read publication...

DOHA PROGRAMME HASN'T FULFILLED DEVELOPMENT PROMISE, WTO SYMPOSIUM TOLD
June 19, 2025 - A Third World Network Report
WTO Members were told at the WTO Public Symposium on 18 June that the Doha Ministerial Declaration's promise of putting development at the heart of the Doha work programme had so far turned out to be empty rhetoric.  Read publication...

Commodity System Challenges: moving sustainability into the mainstream of natural resource economies.
April 1, 2025 - Sustainability Institute
A new Sustainability Institute report provides a map of the structures that produce the behavior common to many natural resource economies — ever-increasing production leading to the traps of over-harvest, pollution, and community decline. This paper combines results of Sustainability Institute research on US corn and forest systems with insights from other commodity management systems.  Read publication...

Economic Globalization vs. Human Rights: Lessons From The Bolivian Water Revolt
April 30, 2025
The Bechtel Corporation’s 2000 takeover of the public water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia and the civic revolt that ended it, in addition to being an inspiring story of local people taking courageous action, is also a cautionary tale of how global economic rules have the power to reduce international human rights law into nothing but pretty words on paper.  Read publication...

Water Justice for All
March 31, 2025 - Friends of the Earth International
Major new publication from Friends of the Earth International, in pdf format.  Read publication...

WATER IS LIFE: A CIVIL SOCIETY WORLD WATER VISION FOR ACTION
March 31, 2025
This civil society statement was prepared in the run up to the World Water Forum in Kyoto.  Read publication...

Africa Policy for a new Era: Ending Segregation in U.S. Foreign Relations
January 29, 2025 - Africa Action
Founded in xxxAfrica Action is the oldest advocacy organization on African affairs in the U.S. This document, produced by defines an agenda for U.S. Africa policy for a new era. It provides an overview of current challenges and offers recommendations for U.S. policy on priority issues and areas. It affirms Africa ’s importance to the U.S. and outlines what is required of the U.S. to engage collaboratively and effectively with its African partners.  Read publication...

Women and Gender WSSD Survival Kit
August 1, 2025 - Women's Environment and Development Organization
The WSSD Survival Kit on Women and Gender highlights women's perspectives on sustainable development for a new global policy based on equality, human rights and world peace.  Read publication...

Porto Alegre & Beyond: Following up on the World Social Forum
November 22, 2024 - Interhemispheric Resource Center
The growing profile of citizen-based agendas in global affairs represents one of the most promising developments in the international arena. This "Citizen Action in the Americas Discussion Paper" reports on an annual gathering that has become a prominent space for citizens' movements to meet and develop strategies for a more hopeful future: the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.  Read publication...

A New Development Paradigm-Domestic Demand-Led Growth
October 30, 2024 - Thomas I. Palley, Foreign Policy In Focus
WHY IT IS NEEDED & HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN Critics of the neoliberal model of economic development—one driven by the demands of transnational corporations— have long been saying that this dominant paradigm isn’t working. It’s not producing broad-based economic development at home or abroad. But what’s the alternative?  Read publication...

The National Security Strategy of the United States of America
September 1, 2024 - U.S. Government
The National Security Strategy was issued by the White House in September.  Read publication...

Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy
October 10, 2024 - Edited by Robin Broad, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Global Backlash is the first book to move beyond the monolithic portrayal of the globalization protests that have escalated since Seattle and are not likely to abate soon.  Read publication...

The Two Faces of Globalization
May 31, 2025 - Branko Milanovic, World Bank
The paper shows that the current view of globalization as an automatic and benign force is seriously flawed. It is mistaken because it focuses on only one, positive, face of globalization while entirely neglecting a malignant one.  Read publication...

Living Economies
August 29, 2024 - YES! magazine
The fall issue of YES! magazine brings alive alternatives to what lead author David Korten calls the global suicide economy. This issue of YES! features stories on how communities from Brazil to Appalachia, from Argentina to Vermont are building living economies that value life and community.  Read publication...

African Civil Society Declaration on NEPAD
July 8, 2025
African civil society organizations declare their resistance to the "New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development" (Nepad), and push for demands that they think better address development, democracy, human rights and peace in Africa.  Read publication...

A Guide to the Enron Collapse
July 8, 2025 - Polaris Institute, Darren Puscas
This article provides an overall guide to understanding the Enron debacle, in a manner that broadens it from the standard, narrow financial or scandal-based story you can read in newspapers.  Read publication...

World Summit on Sustainable Development: Bali, Indonesia
July 8, 2025 - Antonio G. M. La Vina and Gretchen Hoff, World Resources Institute
This paper provides an update on the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), focusing on the outcomes of the Fourth Preparatory Committee (Prepcom IV) meeting recently held in Bali, Indonesia.  Read publication...

Update on Citizens’ Campaigns on the FTAA
July 3, 2025 - Karen Hansen-Kuhn, ART/DGAP
Representatives of the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) and other social movements met recently in Quito, Ecuador for the purpose of exchanging information on their respective popular-education campaigns on the potential impacts of and alternatives to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). They also discussed the coordination of those campaigns at the hemispheric level and developed plans around a major civil-society forum to be held parallel to the official meeting of trade ministers on the FTAA in late October.  Read publication...

MAKING TRADE WORK FOR WOMEN: Opportunities& Obstacles
June 18, 2025 - Marceline White, Women's EDGE
In this primer, we explore why and where women may be affected differently, and we offer pragmatic, feasible "fixes" that the U.S. could adopt to become better global partner.  Read publication...

The Relative Impact of Trade Liberalization on Developing Countries
June 11, 2025
In recent years, new trade agreements have often been promoted on the basis of their potential benefit to developing countries... When the benefits and costs of continued liberalization... are evaluated according to standard economic research, it is not clear that the developing countries as a group are facing a net gain.  Read publication...

Social Movements and Regional Integration in the Americas
June 18, 2025 - Beverly Bell, Center for Economic Justice
This paper explores the status of cross-border social movements in the Americas in an era of globalization.  Read publication...

The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and Poverty
May 21, 2025 - Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN)
A multi-country participatory assessment based on the results of a joint World Bank/Civil Society/Government Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initaitive (SAPRI) and the Citizen's Assessment of Structural Adjustment (CASA)  Read publication...

Managing the Invisible Hand - Markets, Farmers and International Trade
April 1, 2025 - Sophia Murphy, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The current global agriculture trade agreement will not succeed in helping farmers and broad-based economic development until it addresses market power by transnational corporations, finds a new report released today by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.  Read publication...