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NGOs Boycott EITI Meeting over "Civil Society" Representation
March 02, 2016
Demonstrating the difficulty of businesses to fully meet the financial transparency demands of nongovernmental organizations ("NGOs"), Publish What You Pay and other NGOs have boycotted a meeting of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative ("EITI") in a dispute over the nomination of a civil society representative to the EITI International Board.
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WEF Article Seeks Way Forward for Global Governance
February 29, 2016
Two staff members at the World Economic Forum ("WEF") write on the WEF website that global governance systems must be adaptable and pragmatic to survive in the current world and that actors must establish a kind of governance that incentivizes long-term over short-term interests.
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UN Committee Elects Syrian Diplomat as Rapporteur
February 29, 2016
Patrick Goodenough writes that a UN special committee dealing with decolonization issues has sparked an outcry among nongovernmental organizations by electing a diplomat from the Syrian Government, which has regularly faced accusations of atrocities against its people during an ongoing civil war in the country, as its rapporteur.
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UN Official Pushes Preventive "Responsibility to Protect"
February 29, 2016
Using the chaos in Syria as an example of the failure of the international community to fulfill its "responsibility to protect," agreed at a UN summit in 2005, UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson called on countries to put this principle in action by intervening early in conflicts to prevent calamities including genocide and crimes against humanity.
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UN Committee Criticizes Canada on Nontraditional Rights
February 29, 2016
A press release from the nongovernmental organization Canada Without Poverty praises the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights for "grilling" Canadian officials on issues including a reduction in social spending, increased homelessness, and the failure of the federal government to coerce provincial governments into enforcing nontraditional "human rights."