World Development Movement blog

Last month, our director, Deborah Doane, blogged about the worrying noises coming out of DFID lately on aid. Indeed, the past few months have seen proposals like moving towards a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ model of aid that would see ‘returns for the UK taxpayer’. And Andrew Mitchell has been busy recasting aid as something that we give because it is in the UK national interest, rather than as a purely altruistic gesture.

It is difficult to watch Africa in the midst of yet another food crisis and hear the plea from aid agencies desperately searching for more funds. Organisations such as Action Against Hunger and World Vision, have estimated that a further $200 million is needed to fight the growing food crisis and more than 15 million people are now said to be at risk, including many from some of the poorest countries in the world: Chad, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso . 

Last week we launched our exposé of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) – UK's supposedly 'independent' regulator of the financial services sector. We revealed how the FSA – funded by the banks and staffed by ex-bankers – acts as a lobby arm for the banks.

Guest blog post by Oscar Reyes, writer and activist on climate and energy finance, and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

Given how backwards the Rio Summit’s priorities were, it's hardly surprising that negotiations ended before they began. But a slow swarm of black ministerial limousines has crawled across Rio regardless, with Ministers, Presidents and Prime Ministers queuing up to talk the language of sustainability, while mostly advancing corporate interests. It came to a close yesterday with the adoption of a final  declaration called, without hint of irony, "The Future We Want."

After my brief encounter with Barclays, where I presented them with a “shame” award for their role in food speculation, I was eager to cause some more mischief, this time with the Financial Service Authority (FSA).

On 23 May I went along to an event organised by Friends of the Earth in North London, an evening of discussion with incredibly inspiring Palestinian water activist Zayneb Al Shalafeh. Part of the grassroots Palestinian group Lifesource which has been campaigning for water justice for Palestinians since 2007, Zayneb focussed on the fact that the right to water is a right explicitly recognised under international law.