On October 29 and 30, 2008, representatives of states are set to meet for the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

This gathering is even more significant now considering that the meeting will be held in Manila, Philippines – a country known for its decades-old export of labor and ranks among the top labor-sending countries and is one of the biggest recipients of remittance from overseas nationals. From the estimated 10 million Filipinos working in other countries across the globe, remittances sent in 2007 reached US$14.4B.1

Contrary to Pres. Arroyo’s statement that her administration’s economic measures will withstand the current global financial crisis, research group IBON Foundation says it is precisely government’s economic strategies that have made the Philippine economy overly vulnerable to external factors.

CSOs that gathered during a workshop in Accra, Ghana in September rejected the World Bank’s proposed funding mechanism and condemned its attempt to control the global financing policy on climate through its Climate Investment Fund (CIF).

Accra, Ghana - Civil society organizations (CSOs) are unanimous in highlighting the failure of aid to effectively deliver progress to communities around the world, as explained in the Reality of Aid 2008 Report , “Aid Effectiveness: Democratic Ownership and Human Rights” which was launched on September 1 during the CSO Parallel Forum on Aid Effectiveness.

Walk down Chabanel Street on a weekday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. and you will see people streaming out of the large buildings that line the street, housing the factories that make this the center of the garment district of Montreal. Earlier located in Mile End and before that downtown, the garment industry has historically been an entry point for immigrants into the local economy. Now the future is uncertain for its thousands of workers. In the last five years, there has been a steady decline in manufacturing jobs in the garment industry, the direct consequence of a WTO-GATT mandated ending of quotas and tariffs on garments between 1994 and 2005 and the shift of garment manufacturing jobs to lower wage regions such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China and increases in importing the products to Canada.

I. Introduction

One of the most recent and publicized problems facing expatriate workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries today is the sponsorship system. This has been strongly exposed by both international human rights organizations and GCC countries as being oppressive and slave-like. This in turn has led labor officials in some GCC countries to also call for the abolition of the sponsorship system.

The Undocumented Migrants and Immigrants

The existence of undocumented migrants and immigrants is part of the whole phenomenon of the forced migration of people and the commodification of human labor.

While millions around the world starve, billions of dollars are pumped into the faltering US financial system to keep it alive.

The giants have stepped on a financial minefield. In the past six months, three of America’s top five investment banks have disappeared. The remaining two – Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – are gasping for breath. While Morgan Stanley is considering merger options, the stocks of Goldman have slumped.

The number of spouses migrating to Australia has increased greatly over the past ten years, despite a tightening of border security measures.

Interestingly, when considering any impact of the September 11, 2001 or October 2002 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, and Bali, the substantive increases in arrivals of spouses and fiancées in Australia have taken place since 2001. In 2001-02, 16,527 spouses or fiancées arrived; this increased by almost 13,000 annually with 29,421 spouses and fiancées arriving in 2006-07.

From Coldplay to Leonardo diCaprio to Al Gore, influential environmentalists are increasingly modeling green behavior by neutralizing their carbon emissions through carbon offsets. Briefly, offsets are based on the notion that consumers can balance out carbon intensive activities, like travel, by contributing to projects that reduce greenhouse gases. Between 2005 and 2007 the market for carbon offsets grew 175%, reaching $110 million (Faris 2007). But just as buying indulgences in the Middle Ages never really erased your sins, carbon offsets rarely counteract your carbon use. Moreover, in some cases, carbon offset projects actually hurt local people. Many experts now believe that well-intentioned consumers are not just wasting their money on offsets, but that purchasing them actually does more harm than good.

Debt remains a severe problem for underdeveloped countries and their citizens over two decades since the explosion of the debt crisis in the early 1980s. It continues to hinder development, consign economies to backwardness, and keep generations of people in poverty and deprivation. The rapid descent of the global economy into greater turmoil in 2008 makes the situation even more urgent. The plight of those who have long been mired in poverty is worsening and underscores the pressing need to resolve the debt burden afflicting scores of countries and the majority of people on the planet.