Free trade or slave trade? How the EU's free trade agreements in Colombia and Peru reward human rights abuses, destroy livelihoods, promote land grabbing and strip governments of their sovereignty to regulate capital flows.
An analysis of how the EU Common Agricultural Policy and its external trade policy increases import dependency and undermines food security in developing countries, contributing to the escalating food crisis.
China's fast growing capital expansion within South East Asia is raising concerns about landgrabs and exploitative practices, especially as it is often aligned with support for authoritarian regimes such as Burma.
Since Mugabe initiated a more aggressive land reform programme in Zimbabwe in 2000, the accepted wisdom was that it had been an unmitigated disaster. A new ten-year detailed study of one province in Zimbabwe challenges this view.
Programme and background to Peoples' Tribunal on "Neoliberal Policies and European Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in Latin America and the Caribbean”.
Since the first huge spike in global food prices back in 2007-2008, companies and foreign governments have acquired or signed long term leases for land in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Many of these transactions were negotiated quickly and in secrecy.
"The banks are ours!" Public money was used to bail out the banks, and now they are lending back to the public at interest, while governments ignore the social and environmental crises that confront society. It is time to demand real solutions that will work not only for the sake of the economy but for the lives and conditions of people on whom it depends.
One week before the official Asia-Europe government meeting (ASEM) gathers in Milan, over 400 people from 42 countries in Europe and Asia gathered at the 10th Asia-Europe Peoples forum (AEPF) to present their demands and recommendations.
Vruchtbaar en goedkoop land is gewild. In Afrika jagen zakenlui op dit 'groene goud'. Trouw schreef er een serie over. Ook in de Mekong- regio in Zuidoost-Aziëwordt land van bewoners afgepakt, vooral voor de rubberproductie. Foute zaak, zeggen mensenrechtenclubs. Maar de autoriteiten zijn blij met de investeerders.
Since Mugabe initiated a more aggressive land reform programme in Zimbabwe in 2000, the accepted wisdom was that it had been an unmitigated disaster. A new ten-year detailed study of one province in Zimbabwe challenges this view.
The term crisis implies a short lived period of uncertainty - suggesting there is something temporary or anomalous about the current state of the global economy. On the contrary, our global economy, from the financial clouds (or bubbles) to the real roots - where men and women work, live and survive - is suffering from systemic flaws based on an ever expanding void between rich and poor.
