The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has given the government of Belize three months to respond to allegations filed 12 years ago by BELPO, an organization representing the Maya people and affected communities.
More than 10 years after its completion in September 2005, the Americas’ official human rights watchdog has opened a case against the government of Belize to consider the impacts of the country’s long controversial, Canadian-owned Chalillo dam.
This terrific article by the Financial Post echoes the warning signs of an earlier Post piece by Probe International’s Patricia Adams on trade with China and, in particular, China’s state-owned enterprises.
These comments by Tanzanian economics professor Humphrey Moshi serve as quite an indictment of the wayward World Bank. When China — no stranger to poor practices itself — is your “saviour” from bad World Bank policies … The Daily News reports.
Hidden foreign aid to an incompetent and dishonest government is set to rob Mozambique of its gas treasure as no one can explain what happened to billions of dollars the country borrowed for a series of price-inflated, murky projects. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) reports.
It may not have been able to compete with fossil fuels but global warming has given nuclear power an edge: on more subsidies. The example of New Jersey shows how desperation on the global warming front is jeopardizing decision-making and ignoring the penalties and perils of “clean energy’s” new good guy.
This Economist piece doesn’t mince words: foreign aid, it says, “is a mess in almost every way”. Hard-won transparency in aid over the past decade has actually revealed “just how badly things are going”.
Nigeria doesn’t need bailouts; it needs to change its governance. Lawrence Solomon reports for the National Post.
A USD80-million research project at India’s Koyna dam site will study reservoir-triggered earthquakes (aka reservoir-induced seismicity) and the causes behind them. Dam activity at Koyna was blamed for a powerful earthquake in 1967 that destroyed the village of Koynanagar in western India’s Maharashtra state, left 180 people dead, 1,500 injured, thousands homeless and power cut off to Bombay.
According to this fantastic commentary on corruption by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi for Foreign Policy, “the rule of law and control of corruption are nearly synonymous”. Without rule of law, she says, attempts to reign in corruption through legal mechanisms will only be captured by the corrupt system in place. The way forward? The defeat of corruption, she says, is not achieved “by importing legal silver bullets from abroad,” it is a political process enabled “through a mix of policies advanced by domestic advocates”. Read on!
A Supreme Court decision involving the World Bank and Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin could threaten fair trials for falsely accused Canadians in the future and help corrupt Canadians to escape punishment. Patricia Adams of Probe International for the Financial Post.
The National Law Review breaks down highlights from China’s controversial new Law on the Management of the Activities of Foreign Non-Governmental Organizations Within China into two parts: the first looks at Charity Law, the second, Foreign NGO Law.
Last week’s anti-corruption summit ignored how western governments and international financial institutions fuel corruption through foreign aid, writes USA Today contributor James Bovard.
China seems well placed to trump its competitors in the nuclear export business but buyer concerns about the quality of components, the rigor of the Chinese regulatory system, the risk of dependence on China and the potential leakage of technologies with strategic geopolitical use, may prove a tough sell. China Dialogue reports.
Another deadly landslide at a hydropower construction site in Fujian, south-east China, highlights the growing risks of dam building in mountainous regions of Asia. Chinadialogue.net reports.
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