The current development policy focus on poverty reduction is erroneous. Historically, successful development policy—from the late fifteenth century until the beginning of the twenty-first—has achieved structural change away from dependence on raw materials and agriculture, adding specialized...

The Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development in 2002 brought leaders and senior officials from Governments and international organizations, senior financial sector executives and NGO advocates together for the first time on “hard” financial and trade matters. The Conference provided...

This paper argues why countries should give priority to developing cross-border regional social policies. The first part presents the conceptual case for regional social policies in terms of how the social dimension of regionalism can provide an alternative to the current pattern of...

Recent calls for more intense debate on and reforms to the international monetary system imply that the current system is unable to respond appropriately and adequately to challenges that have appeared, or become more acute, in recent years. This paper focuses on four such challenges: ensuring...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were introduced to monitor implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration which set out a vision for inclusive and sustainable globalization based on human rights principles. This paper critically assesses the MDG experience including their...

The international community has advanced in reforming the international aid system. Such reform comes at a time when there is a renewed skepticism about aid effectiveness and when the crisis sheds new doubts about the sustainability of donors´ commitments. At the same time, the international...

This report makes some preliminary suggestions for actions to be taken by the international development community and the graduating countries to strengthen the process of preparing for graduation from the least developed country (LDC) category.The report also offers concrete proposals for...

This paper reviews the role of climate change vulnerability in identifying least developed countries (LDCs). Taking a sustainable development perspective, it argues that climate change should be seen as an aggravating factor of existing handicaps and many indicators used to identify LDCs already...

This paper explores the scope of IDF to compensate for declining ODA and/or to enhance the efficiency of ODA. It shows that IDF has not helped much to increase the volume of aid. With regard to efficiency, the role of IDF related mechanisms remains controversial. In view of the above, it may be...