south-north development monitor SUNS [Email Edition]

SUNS #4453, Friday, 11 June 1999

contents

Labour: Emerging package on child labour convention (Chakravarthi Raghavan, Geneva)

Development: Offering crumbs to the heavily indebted (Chakravarthi Raghavan, Geneva)

Europe: Social Democrats aim to halve 'abject poverty' by 2015 (IPS, The Hague)

Zimbabwe: Controversy over genetically modified food (IPS, Harare)

Brazil: One-fourth of workforce in informal sector (IPS, Rio de Janeiro)

Latin America: Critical of US plan to prevent dictatorships (IPS, Guatemala City)

Health: Pakistan tobacco companies capitalise on cricket (IPS, Islamabad)

Environment: US Set to Finance Bolivian Gas Project (IPS, Washington)

Some excerpts from selected articles:

Labour: Emerging package on child labour convention

Geneva, 10 June (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- A package of proposals with compromise language on key provisions for an ILO convention to end the worst forms of child labour, is now emerging, and the International Labour Conference may be able to adopt a Convention next week, sources at the conference said Thursday.

An issue still under negotiation, with the developing country governments and workers on one side, and industrialized country governments on the other, relates to international cooperation and the obligation of rich countries to provide aid funds to achieve some of the objectives of the convention.

And while the Convention will underline the importance of education in elimination of the worst forms of child labour, rehabilitation and reintegration into society of such children, and need to ensure access to free basic education and vocational training for all children removed from such forms of child labour, the absence of such facilities of education and training would not be made into "worst forms of child labour".

Some worker groups and NGOs, championing children's causes sought to use the convention as an instrument to create an obligation on the state to provide such education. However, most of them have come around to the view that the lack of such education is itself a reflection of the poverty, lack of resources and under- development, and such economic and social rights (of children) could not be dealt with through an ILO Convention and subject to its supervisory mechanisms.

Development: Offering "crumbs" to the heavily indebted

Geneva, 10 June (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Despite flowery speeches and grand gestures, the leaders of the industrialized nations plus Russia (the G-8) at their meeting in Cologne (Germany) next week are offering only crumbs of comfort for the world's most indebted nations, a new report from the Jubilee 2000 Coalition charges.

Piecing together information and analysis of proposals from Britain, German and US Governments for debt write-downs and relief for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries, says that the deal would be worth only "five loaves of bread or one bag of rice every year to the average person in the poorest countries."

Even based on the "most generous offer" so far, the British proposal announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in February, the G- 8 will offer each person in the 52 heavily indebted poor countries on average $2.83 each year, while each one in these countries carry a debt burden of an average $573 to their Western creditors.

The director of Jubilee 2000 coalition, Ann Pettifor says: "This report reveals that despite flowery speeches and grand gestures, G-8 leaders are offering "only crumbs of comfort" to the world's most indebted nations.

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