Blood and Milk

UNCTAD Day Four

I am getting tired of the chronological format, and we’ve got a lot of days left. Today I’ll just offer up some observations:

• The first half of the high-level event on women in development depressed me. Heavy on platitudes and generalities, light on any real ideas. I also heard a lot of boring old tropes recycled – women don’t want to work outside the home, changing policy doesn’t help when culture is the problem.

• Things got much better in the afternoon. The incomparable Mary Robinson gave a firm and detailed talk on how we can start including women immediately and the panel discussion that followed. The overall consensus was that good policy has a significant impact on women’s inclusion into public life, and good policy runs the gamut from maternity leave to quotas for political participation.

• I met a woman who was so stunningly racist that I sat there listening to her, totally incredulous and spent the next hour processing that she’d really said all that. Among other things, she told me the problem with Arabs is that they have too much pride, the Middle East is barbaric and doomed, and that Arab civil society activists are cute.

• Speaking of civil society activities, I was on the bus with a bunch of them coming back from the conference venue. The buses run at random, so there’s a lot of waiting, so we all go to know each other. I am always surprised by how wealthy many civil society people are, although it makes sense when you consider it. You don’t have time to start or join an NGO if you’re struggling for money, and the kind of polish that gets you to international conferences is more often found in people with cash.

Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.

I started my day off with a visit to the UNCTAD exhibition hall. I wrote about it in my previous post; let’s just say it left me with some concerns. It does have a free lunch, though, which was exciting to discover. The conference offers snacks all day except for 12-3 pm, when they take away all the jalapeno poppers and petit fours to force you to go buy your lunch. Or, apparently, go eat in the exhibit hall.

After the exhibition, I attended a panel on trade and poverty reduction. One presenter stated that the developing countries now trade more with each other than they do with the North. Lee Crawfurd called shenanigans on that factoid on twitter, and I was unable to find any data source for it.

That was followed by a stint watching the general UNCTAD debate, where nations presented their general statements. Some highlights: Indonesia talked about the need to remove trade barriers and avoid protectionism, but couched it within the now familiar rhetoric of south-south cooperation and triangular cooperation. China brought up quantitative easing as an obstacle to global financial recovery. Switzerland expressed its pleasure that the JIU Report was going to be properly addresses, and Israel talked about its development and said that it was ready to train other countries to follow their path. I watched as many introductory statements as I could personally face, and then snuck out to go write a blog post.

And then…drumroll…the most energetic meeting I had attended yet: the High Level Panel Discussion on Debt Crisis Prevention and Management. Seriously, people were getting there early so they’d have good seats. The purpose of the panel was to discuss a set of non-binding regulations to regulate both the borrowing and lending of capital. The idea was that lenders as well as borrowers should be restricted from participating creating excess debt, as opposed to just focusing on debtors. I had to leave the meeting before it ended, but when I left the panel members were very supportive of the new regulations. They were promulgated in January and published on the web, so there was plenty of time for everyone to review them before coming to Doha.

Tomorrow, I’m looking forward to the High-Level event on women in development.

Today’s UNCTAD buzzwords:

• Agriculture value chains
• South-south trade
• Missing links in trade
• Transparent and inclusive

Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.

This morning I went to the exhibition hall at UNCTAD. It was a sad little effort. I saw a man weaving a traditional basket while checking his smart phone, a woman doing an oil painting of a horse while checking her smart phone, and an array of food and handicrafts. There were booths from Qatar’s major banks, a steel company, a newly maritime construction company, and two or three oil companies.

My first thought was of irony. UNCTAD’s angry response to the harm done by globalization and international financial structures, accompanied by two banks, two oil companies, and a steel manufacturer?

My second thought was more complex. It’s pretty clearly that the multinationals who anchor the global economy – and are being blamed in this meeting – see no risk to their corporate futures from UNCTAD, or they wouldn’t have set up their shiny displays.

Maybe we broke this global economy, but we bought it first.

It makes me wonder if anyone is really big-picture thinking about how all of this fits together. UNCTAD delegates are calling for more government intervention into the economy, more taxation on investments, and more FDI, all at the same time. They want an explanation for what went wrong from the same hapless souls who steered us wrong in the first place. Do we really think suddenly everyone is smarter now?

Maybe there is an elephant in this room, and I am looking at a trunk and a tail and some wrinkly skin. But it seems more like a pile of limbs and eyeballs that don’t add up to any living beast.

Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.

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Photo credit: CrankyPK

Day two began with the Inter-Agency Cluster on Trade and Productive Capacity.  This is an inter-agency meeting that only takes place at UNCTAD. Like so many inter-agency meetings, it consisted almost entirely of agency representatives reading prewritten statements and ignoring each other. Some of the prewritten statements were genuinely very interesting, though.

I made it to the meeting in time for the session on development-led globalization. Alan Kyeremartin of the ECA discussed the need to increase trade among African nations. He made the point that improving intra-African trade would also prepare the countries for global trade.

I also discovered a UN body I’d never heard of before, UNCITRAL. UNCITRAL works to harmonize trade regulations globally. It’s a consensus body, and sounds excruciatingly dull to work for. The UNCITRAL representative made a great point about the role of law in development, though. He said that development is grounded in a legal framework that supports free and equal legal dealings and transparency. Which, YES. In a big way. I did a little more thinking on the rule of law issue for UN Dispatch.

Next, I attended the saddest little press briefing you’ve ever seen. There were maybe six media members there, and that’s if you count me. I assume all the other media was watching from the media room, but still. I don’t even have notes from the briefing.

And then, we come to the big event. The opening ceremony. Welcoming speeches, an operetta about the global financial crisis. (you think I kid? I do not.) Finally, remarks from the nations attending. And that’s when you knew, for sure, you were at UNCTAD.

Because they people were mad. Just about every statement demanded accountability from the wealthy nations that had caused the world financial crisis, increased government intervention in national economies, and some kind of plan for making sure this doesn’t happen again.

The opening was really the high point of the day. After that, I attended the opening procedural plenary, but that’s only interesting if you’re a geek like me. (I love parliamentary procedure. It’s like elaborate dance.) It did feature Cuba throwing a monkeywrench into routine procedural matters, but that’s about it.

Buzzwords from Day two of UNCTAD:

• South-south cooperation
• Justice
• Fairness
• Equity
• Triangular cooperation
• First UN financial meeting since the crisis
• Finance vs “real economy”
• Inclusiveness
• Boom/bust

Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.

Original post date: May 12, 2008
Permalink: http://bloodandmilk.org/2008/05/12/whats-the-difference-between-relief-and-development-programs/

New-to-me note:
Now is as good a time as any to get back to basics and make a distinction between two different categories of international aid programs. Although some of this may seem obvious, for any people new to the idea of doing international aid work, it may be useful to understand the differences more explicitly and I think this post does a good job of describing them. -MN

What’s the difference between relief and development programs?

So, today I went to UNCTAD. Well, not UNCTAD exactly. The pre-UNCTAD meetings. Mainly the World Civil Society Forum. Tomorrow UNCTAD officially opens, so today just had the sidecar meetings that take advantage of everyone’s presence in Doha.

The first meeting I went to was on the role of tourism in sustainable development. It was a series of speakers, followed by a panel discussion, and then question and answer at the end. Kind of a weird format, honestly. It made it hard for the audience to participate, and it didn’t have much of a flow.

There were a lot of generalities, but a few interesting ideas stuck out:

• One speaker suggested that hotel supplies and equipment get the same tax breaks that factories receive
• Most jobs in tourism are bad jobs, and we need to find a way to address that
• Small countries can use the web to promote tourism on a limited marketing budget

Next, I went to a session on developing new financial architecture. It started strong, with a stirring condemnation of the financial structures that led us into global financial crisis. It was genuinely exciting to watch someone strike out so hard against the existing financial establishment. I did some web research, though, and discovered this was not the first – or even the fifth – time this talk had been given. In its own heterodox way, it was old hat.

It also turned out that the session was about the need for new financial architecture, not possible systems for said architecture. I found that a little disappointing; I know we can’t just ignore the mistakes that led to global financial meltdown, but I also was hoping for a sense of what we can do in the future.

I closed the day by attending the press conference that preceded tomorrow’s opening plenary. The speakers were Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, President of the sixty-sixth session of UNGA and Supachai Panitchpakdi, UNCTAD Secretary General. Panitchpakdi took the opportunity to lay out his defense for UNCTAD’s existence and special role. Al-Nasser was less clearly on the defense, but no less firm in his case for UNCTAD. I did my best to accurately transcribe what they have to say, and toss it out on twitter, because I just don’t have the economics background to analyze on the fly. I could tell this much, though: Panitchpakdi was clearly feeling pressured to sell UNCTAD and its role.

That’s all for today. I’ll be writing up the opening presser in more detail for UN Dispatch.

Disclosure: My trip to Doha was funded by APCO, which has been contracted by the Qatari Ministry of Trade to support UNCTAD. They don’t have editorial control over my writing, and they don’t pay me to post.  

Let’s talk about UNCTAD

UNCTAD is the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Its 13^th meeting starts on Saturday in Qatar, and I am here in Doha to report on it. I’ll be putting personal reflections here on this blog, and more serious reporting at UN Dispatch.

If you, like most of my friends, think that UNCTAD sounds incredibly boring, I’ll tell you the secret about this conference. It’s actually very controversial. UNCTAD tends to give economic advice that is radically different from the World Bank and the IMF.  Economists are divided: Dani Rodrik came out in support of UNCTAD, arguing that it is an important voice. Daniel Altman takes the opposite view, dinging UNCTAD for “sloppiness in basic economics and dubious personnel policy”.

UNCTAD xiii is especially controversial because right now G7 countries are trying to change the UNCTAD mandate. Either because UNCTAD had overstepped its competitive advantage and is giving bad advice to poor countries, or because the donor country alliance want to shut down the only heterorthodox voice in global economics.