The world faces an unprecedented coincidence of global crises. They testify to the failure of the dominant model of development and economic progress that is oriented on a technocratic modernisation path, is blind to human rights and the ecological limits of the global ecosystem, confuses growth of Gross Domestic Product with progress in society, and regards poverty as a primarily technical challenge in which categories of inequality and social justice are neglected.

The Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development [...]

On 31 October 2011 the Reflection Group submitted a statement to the secretariat of the Rio+20 Conference to be held in June 2012. It was prepared during a drafting session in October in New Paltz, NY and highlights some of the issues and proposals that will come up in the final report of the Reflection Group again. The final report will come out in spring of 2012 after a final meeting of the Group.

For its fourth and - if things go as planned - final meeting, the Reflection Group is kindly hosted by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden. While there is a lot do for the group on the three days from the 16th-18th of September, the group will also listen to this year's "Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture" delivered by Jan Eliasson, former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden and former President of the UN General Assembly.

 

Already on Thursday, September [...]

The Reflection Group met for the third time in direct succession to the Social Watch Global Assembly in Manila, Philippines. The discussions brought many new insights. With the meeting in Uppsala coming up shortly, the group started working on the final outcome, that was decided to be in the form of a report on the "development" and well-being.
 

At their second meeting in New York City, 4-6 March 2011, the members of the Reflection Group formulated the following appeal. The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development - Rio 2012, must change the dominant mindset by Restoring public rights over corporate privileges after thirty years of strengthening the power of investors and big corporations through deregulation, trade and financial liberalization, tax cuts and exemptions, and weakening the role of the state; and after the market-driven financial meltdown. The principles [...]

The first meeting of the Reflection Group took place January 12-14 in Berlin. The meeting was a great start for the work of the group with a shared sense of urgency and commitment by the members. A report on the meeting will be available soon. Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III has already written an essay on the meeting that was published in the January 17, 2011 edition of BusinessWorld.

Beijing/Berlin/Montevideo/New York/Uppsala, November 15, 2010 – Today, an alliance of civil society groups, networks and foundations, including Third World Network, Social Watch, DAWN, the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, Global Policy Forum, terre des hommes, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, launched the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives.

The group consists of about 15 leading civil society activists, experts and academics from around the globe. The group will assess conventional and alternative models of development and well-being, reconsider development goals and [...]

Over the years since the Millennium Summit, the MDGs have proved to be an instrument of development policy that is both effective as publicity and suitable for campaigns. They are easy to understand and to communicate to a broader public. The civil society and UN campaigns on the MDGs have contributed to enhancing public awareness of the problems of poverty and hunger in the countries of the South – including not only those people especially concerned with development. Under the [...]