Some random observations from the ‘Ten Years of War Against Poverty’ conference in Manchester, before I head off to Edinburgh for tomorrow’s conference on ‘Making the Most of Scotland’s Aid (it’s that time of year…) Ravi Kanbur (one of my heroes for his paper on why NGOs and the  big institutions disagree all the time) has an intriguing proposal for

At the last minute, the UN has postponed its ‘Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development’ from 1-3 June to 24-26th June, still in New York. This will allow it time to sort out the draft conclusions and try and convince a respectable number of world leaders to attend. The process for arriving at

I finally got round to reading the report of the UN Commission of Experts on reforms of the international monetary and financial system, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz. It’s very sensible, comprehensive and solution-oriented. Trouble is, is anyone listening? Regrettably, the UN process seems largely delinked from the G20/IMF/World Bank leadership on the crisis (see previous post on this). Highlights from