Conference to refocus post-2015 development agenda on poorest nations’ priorities

[IIED press release] New ‘sustainable development goals’ for all nations to adopt in 2015 could deepen problems in the least developed countries (LDCs)  if they fail to take account of these nations’ priorities and the international nature of challenges they face.

So say the organisers of a high-level meeting next week that will enable frank and open dialogue between, on one hand, those in the political process of setting the goals and, on the other, those in LDCs who will need to implement the goals if they are to have any impact.

The meeting, on 29-31 January at Wilton Park has been organised by IIED and the UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS).

It will bring together politicians, diplomats, civil servants and representatives of UN agencies, research institutions and nongovernmental organisations to explore how the needs of the LDCs can be put at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda. The delegates will include members of the LDC Independent Expert Group, which has published a new position paper to coincide with the meeting.

2012 Shaping Up as Worst Year Ever for Journalists

By Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Jun 25 2012 (IPS) - It’s the type of honour roll that journalists would prefer not to be on.

But as an emotional Allison Bethel-McKenzie read out the names of the 72 journalists who have made that grim list so far this year, even Trinidad and Tobago’s president, George Maxwell Richards, was moved to plead for “some form of internationally recognised immunity” to lessen the risks to journalists while doing their jobs.

“From Somalia to Syria, the Philippines to Mexico and Iraq to Pakistan, reporters are being brutally targeted for death in unparalleled numbers,” Bethel-McKenzie, executive director of the International Press Institute (IPI), told the Austria-based organisation’s 61st World Congress here.

President Richards, in his address to the opening ceremony Sunday, acknowledged that while the media plays a critical public role, “the risks for media personnel are ever increasing, as they are for diplomats, in a changing world environment which does not guarantee safety.