Wolfowitz Starts Search For World Bank Top Officials

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has appointed a committee to find candidates from developing countries for the Bank's Number 2 position, a step intended to open up a traditionally closed decision-making process for top officials, reports Reuters.

In a letter to staff late on Monday, Wolfowitz announced an eight-member committee of World Bank officials to choose candidates to handle the responsibilities of departing Managing Director, Shengman Zhang, who is leaving at the end of the year. Wolfowitz has already made clear he intends to divide Zhang's roles of global operations and strategy into two positions.

           
The committee is the first major break from past procedures by Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz has insisted -- despite staff concerns -- no major shake-up is planned. But he is believed to want a more efficient operation based on measurable results to overcome perceptions of a bloated bureaucracy at the Bank. "I am asking the committee to look for candidates who share our commitment to the Bank Group's mission of poverty reduction, who have extensive experience in developing countries and preferably come from developing countries; and who are dedicated to assuring that the Bank Group is a model of integrity and accountability," Wolfowitz wrote. "The committee will be supported by an external private search firm which we are in the final stages of selecting," he added.

           
Graeme Wheeler, the World Bank's Treasurer and a former New Zealand treasury official, will head the committee and also act as Managing Director until the post is filled, Wolfowitz said. Developing countries have long called for a more open selection process of top officials in institutions like the World Bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund, which are dominated by wealthy industrial nations. The committee includes Frannie Leautier, Vice President of the World Bank Institute; Pamela Cox, Vice President, Latin America; Dorothy Berry, Vice President for Human Resources at the International Finance Corp.; Michel Wormser, Sector Director, Africa infrastructure; Daniela Gressani, Country Director for Central Europe and the Baltics; Philip Adoteye, Senior Auditor; and Robin Cleveland, a Senior Advisor to Wolfowitz.

Committee members are drawn from the Bank's rank and file, as well as management, a move intended to demonstrate the commitment to a wide-reaching selection process. "The committee represents the Bank Group's regions and network as well as its rich diversity of personnel," Wolfowitz said. Wheeler, who is not a candidate for the post, is highly regarded inside and outside the Bank, overseeing nearly $20 billion in multiple currencies and over $60 billion in assets for the World Bank. "Graeme shares my view that in addition to core professional competencies, integrity, trust, accountability, and respect are the key ingredients which will assure our institutional and individual success and results," Wolfowitz said.

UN Agencies, World Bank, ILO Form Task Force To Tally Child Labor

Two UN agencies, the World Bank and the International Labor Organization (ILO) announced in Beijing during Monday's meeting on Achieving Education for All and Elimination of Child Labor at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Fifth High Level Group Meeting on Education that they have set up a task force to do statistical work on child labor around the world, reports Kyodo (Japan).

           
Reuters further notes that World Bank Executive Director Ad Melkert told a news conference that particular emphasis will be put on collecting data. “A lot is unknown, a lot of the reality is hidden and that reality needs to come to the forefront in order to be able to define the strategies to combat child labor effectively. The task force would also aim to mobilize political will to fight child labor, Melkert added. Melkert said extra income for families from their children's salaries might provide a bit of cash in the short term but that keeping children away from school was a recipe for continued poverty. Maintaining child labor also means maintaining poverty," Melkert said. "Only by getting children to school will the national income grow and in the end also the income of parents who are sending their children to school."

           
The meetings' hosts, the ILO, together with UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank and the Global March Against Child Labor, will be the initial partners in the task force, which would start work immediately, officials said. The organization, which gave no data for individual countries, would publish new figures in early 2006 that might give an indication of whether the problem is declining or is on the rise, Tapiola said.

           
Xinhua (China) writes that the proposal was unanimously adopted by the participants who all recognized that key links between combating child labor and universal education exist. The participants agreed that the global task force will start to collect better data in countries and they will invite other partners to make cooperation broader, not only between education and child labor agencies but on an international level. This, it is believed, will help increase political will and momentum to mainstream child labor issues, foster advocacy for coordination and support, and step up exchanges of best practices to help countries learn from one another.

           
Xinhua meanwhile reports in a separate piece that China on Monday vowed to provide further educational assistance to other developing nations despite difficulties in its own national education. Addressing the UN education conference, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said, "China is ready to make more contribution to the development of education around the globe and further increase educational assistance to the developing countries." China will help other developing countries train more school masters, to increase the present amount of 500 to 1,500 annually, said Wen, adding China will offer an aid of $1 million to the UNESCO for education in Africa and for female pupil education. He promised to build 100 schools equipped with necessary teaching facilities in rural areas of other developing countries in three years. Meanwhile, China will recruit more students from developing countries and provide them with more government scholarships. In addition, China will step up educational assistance to those developing countries stricken by earthquake, tsunami and hurricane, Wen added.

Africa Should Widen Focus In Doha Talks: IMF Paper

Africa would benefit from expanded trade with other developing economies and ought to widen its focus in world trade talks, an International Monetary Fund economist said in a report released on Monday, reports Reuters.

           
The research policy paper ‘Africa in the Doha Round’ said those representing Africa in current World Trade Organization (WTO) talks may be too fixated on accessing rich country markets. "African negotiators may have overlooked the potential market access gains in developing countries, where trade barriers remain relatively high and demand for African imports has expanded substantially," said IMF Africa Department Senior Economist Yongzheng Yang, who wrote the report.

           
In the lead-up to the Hong Kong talks, Africa has sought to secure better access to Western markets with limited attention to dismantling the continent's own trade barriers, said the staff paper, which does not represent the IMF's official view but is meant to spark discussion within the Fund. While industrial countries remain Africa's dominant export destination, the paper said, Africa ought to pay more attention to China and other fast-growing developing partners who took in 30 percent of African exports in 2004. 

           
"The growth in Africa's imports from developing countries will increasingly benefit its economies in terms of cheaper consumer and intermediate goods, increased technology transfer, and inflows of foreign direct investment," Yang said. Preferred access for some African products in Europe and the US -- such as special status for Mauritius sugar and Lesotho garments -- has helped in some cases but has limited utility, Yang said. "To promote overall trade, African countries need to strike a balance between seeking or retaining preferences and undertaking further domestic reforms, and between improving market access to developing and to developed country markets," he said. The IMF paper said African agricultural exporters could expect "large" benefits from market openings under a Doha deal but noted the continent's agriculture importers could feel pinched from higher prices after liberalization.

           
"If many African countries avail themselves of a 'round for free,' their arguments for greater market openness in industrial countries would be less persuasive," Yang said. "A strong commitment to liberalize their own trade would make African countries' position in the negotiations much stronger," he said, adding such a move would also give Africa leverage to seek more trade assistance from rich donors.

           
In other trade news, Agence France Presse reports that nine developing countries on Monday accused rich nations of sidelining the interests of the poor in WTO talks on liberalizing global commerce. South Africa, along with Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Namibia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Venezuela, submitted a new text Monday to the WTO demanding that rich countries open up their markets to poor countries' farm goods and reform their agricultural policies. Faizel Ismail, South Africa's ambassador to the WTO, was particularly critical of the EU, which has been accused of failing to offer deep enough cuts in its import duties on farm goods to allow developing countries better access to its market.

           
However, the news agency notes, he acknowledged that the world's poorest countries are likely to benefit less than better-off developing nations from cuts in farm subsidies and duties in the rich world. He urged rich countries to give the poorest countries a boost by allowing them quota- and tariff-free access to wealthy markets. That is something the EU already has in place and says it wants to see other rich nations adopt. Ismail said the nine countries who spoke out on Monday were "ready to make a contribution" to that debate.

           
AFX Asia (Hong Kong) further notes that African countries are disappointed by the WTO’s proposals to free up cotton trade, said Benin's ambassador to the WTO, Samuel Amehou. The WTO's Director-General Pascal Lamy submitted on Saturday at an informal meeting of heads of delegations a draft ministerial text for the upcoming Hong Kong trade talks. Amehou said that Lamy's draft has no substance, stressing that the idea of setting up a compensation fund for the poorest countries that are hit by the subsidies paid by the richest countries, in particular the US, to their cotton producers, was not included in the text. Lamy's draft only refers to the WTO's commitment to ensuring "prioritization of the cotton issue" and reaffirms the "complementarity of the trade policy and development assistance aspects of cotton." Amehou said the African countries will not be able to reach agreement at the Hong Kong WTO summit, "unless this issue is resolved".

           
Dow Jones also reports that European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson Monday warned WTO talks need to intensify in early 2006 to meet the deadline for an accord, but signaled no give-and-take by the European Union and called demands from some countries to liberalize the agricultural market "extravagant." Mandelson released a statement in Brussels criticizing Pascal Lamy’s draft. "I fear it will not advance the trade reform talks as it is," Mandelson said. "There is progress in agriculture, even though we are still looking for further commitments from others. However, this progress is not matched in industrial goods or services. This lack of balance is a real problem and points to the ground we need to make up at Hong Kong".

Kyodo (Japan) finally adds that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown told a conference of leading business figures in London on Monday that Britain would push for a new trade deal at the WTO talks in Hong Kong next month. He told business leaders that hosting the Group of Seven -- plus China, India, South Africa and Brazil -- finance ministers' meeting on Friday and Saturday would allow for preparatory talks to take place.

Lesotho To Offer Free HIV Tests

In what is believed to be the first program of its kind in the world, every villager in the tiny, mountainous kingdom of Lesotho will be offered a free HIV test, reports The BBC.

Current estimates show 30 percent of adults in the southern African country are infected with HIV but very few know it. Knowledge of HIV status is considered key to preventing the spread of the disease but - as in most countries of the world - until now Lesotho's testing facilities have waited for people to come to them. This program wants to reverse that, taking the tests to the people. One of the most innovative options is door-to-door testing where health workers will visit every house armed with an HIV kit.

           
The Times (UK) writes that Lesotho’s ministers and public health officials will announce the $12 million program this week to test the 1.9 million people living in this mountainous enclave within South Africa for HIV. In a groundbreaking move for African healthcare, King Letsie III of Lesotho is likely to become the first monarch to take the test publicly, at a clinic in the capital, Maseru, on Thursday. The gesture by the King is seen as critical in reducing the stigma still associated with HIV across much of the continent. The authorities hope that by reducing the stigma those that test positive will be encouraged to seek treatment as well as refraining from unprotected sex.

The testing program, which is being coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Lesotho's Health Ministry, is designed to ensure that all members of the population over the age of 12 will know their HIV status by the end of 2007. Though tests cannot be mandatory under international human rights law, it is hoped that the vast majority of the population will be reached and will give consent.

           
Speaking shortly before the announcement, timed to coincide with World AIDS Day, Jim Yong Kim, director of the WHO's HIV/AIDS department, said that he hoped it would be a blueprint for other nations crippled by the disease. He said that the program should be considered for any country with infection rates above 10 percent. The plan is to train at least 3,700 community health workers to carry out tests, while 3,600 counselors will be recruited locally to offer support and encourage people to find out their HIV status. The HIV test, which is as straightforward as a high-street pregnancy test, requires a finger-prick of blood that takes 15 minutes to show if the virus is present.

           
In related news, Xinhua (China) reports Sub-Sahara African countries are set to hold an anti-AIDS video conference based on Zimbabwe's capital Harare before the World AIDS Day which falls on December 1. The meeting, focusing on HIV/AIDS and related health issues of children and youth, is expected to be attended by African countries including Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and Zimbabwe where people are severely suffering from the epidemic of the disease. The World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Clinton Foundation will also make presentations. The World Bank said Monday in Zimbabwe's Harare that it will this year help United Nations agencies and other AIDS organizations to achieve desired results at local, national and international level.

           
Agence France Presse meanwhile notes that Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, said the Global Fund is facing its worst-ever financial crisis and that the private sector has an obligation to assist, especially in Africa, the continent most affected by the deadly disease. Lewis said the first companies to be targeted should be "the multinationals in oil, minerals and diamonds who've benefited so much from the African continent and the pharmaceutical industry that was so slow to reduce its prices." He said these firms should contribute 0.7 percent of their pre-tax profits to the fund in a program that could be phased in over the next 10 years, ultimately raising billions of dollars. It said it needs $7.1 billion for 2006 and 2007 but so far has received pledges of only $3.8 billion for this period.

           
The Associated Press reports AIDS activists said in a report issued Monday that mismanagement, bureaucracy and inadequate funding have kept the world from meeting a goal to provide treatment to three million HIV-infected people by year's end. The goal, set by the WHO in 2003, would be missed by about 1 million people, according to the 90-page report by the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition. The report focused on six of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic -- the Dominican Republic, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia and South Africa. Chris Collings, a spokesman for the coalition, said the report was not meant to highlight the failure to meet the WHO goals, but to open serious discussions with governments, the United Nations and groups providing treatment on how to improve access to treatment. Less than 50 percent of people needing antiretroviral treatment have received it, the report said.

Richard Holbrooke, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, and the president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, comments in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that “we are not winning the war on AIDS, and our current strategies are not working.” Every year since the first World AIDS Day, the number of people affected has increased, Holbrooke writes. The very best that can be said is that we are losing at a slightly slower rate. Only effective prevention strategies can stop the spread of AIDS. Yet it is precisely here that current policies have failed most seriously. In the long chain of actions required to stop the spread of AIDS, attack on all fronts is necessary. But on one vital front, the world health community has been shamefully quiet for two decades: testing and detection. Because of legitimate concerns about confidentiality and the risk of stigmatization, testing has always been voluntary, and it has been systematically played down as an important component of the effort.

New Plan To Get Rich Nations To Pay For Clean-Up Done By Rain Forests

Arguing that the rest of the world is benefiting from their natural wealth without shouldering the cost, a bloc of developing countries led by Papua New Guinea and Costa Rica plans to make a novel proposition in Montreal this week at the United Nations conference on climate change, “Pay us, and we will preserve our rain forests,” reports The Irish Times.

The proposal is preliminary, and some experts predict it will be bedeviled by the challenge of finding a fair-market value for nature, as well as international skepticism over whether nations such as Papua New Guinea can shield their forests from illegal logging. But the idea, which has begun to garner backing from prominent economists, could expand the number of countries interested in joining a new worldwide pact to combat global warming once the current UN treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, expires in 2012.

           
"Right now, these rain forest nations are providing enormous environmental services to the rest of the world - biodiversity, reduced greenhouse gas emissions - and they are not being compensated," said Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, part of a group of academics at Columbia University championing the proposal. "From the viewpoint of global economic efficiency, the best use for rain forests is to maintain them as rain forests."

           
The Seattle Times (US) further writes that as an incentive to make reductions under the Kyoto pact, countries that slash greenhouse gas emissions can profit by selling "pollution credits" to countries that do not cut emissions enough. Such credits currently are valued at $25 per ton of carbon in Europe and are in high demand. But there is no similar incentive to reward rain forest preservation, despite the elementary scientific understanding that trees consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and release sizable quantities of the gas when they burn or decompose. The group of 10 rain forest nations, which also includes Bolivia, Chile, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is asking the United Nations to consider expanding the carbon trading market to reward land conservation.

           
Using existing carbon trading prices as a reference point, some economists have estimated that the rain forest nations over time stand to gain billions of dollars if they are allowed into the market. Past proposals to compensate countries for preserving rain forests sharply divided environmentalists. Some continue to be concerned that market-based schemes to solve global warming will allow rich nations to effectively buy their way out of reducing greenhouse gases.  "It's sort of the moral equivalent of hiring a domestic. We will pay you to clean our mess," said Daniel Becker, Director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program. "For a long time here in America we have believed in the polluter pays principle. This could become a pay to pollute principle."

           
Environmental groups in Papua New Guinea, meanwhile, question whether the government could stop the rapacious illegal logging that has plagued the country's rain forests in recent years. But many environmental organizations have begun embracing the idea of paying for the preservation of rain forests, arguing that the threat of global warming has become too grave to wait for perfect remedies.

           
The Guardian (UK) adds that the Montreal conference opened with the US government signaling that it will resist attempts to be drawn into a new international process to cut emissions. The US has refused to sign up to Kyoto and sent a clear message that it was in no mood to rethink its opposition to binding international agreements. The US chief negotiator, Harlan Watson, said he would strongly resist Canadian plans to combine the US, other developed nations and the developing countries in a joint commitment to action.

The Associated Press meanwhile notes US officials told the conference that their government was doing more than most to protect the earth's atmosphere. Harlan Watson said that while President George W. Bush declined to join the treaty, the US leader takes global warming seriously. He noted greenhouse gas emissions had actually gone down by 0.8 percent under Bush. "With regard to what the United States is doing on climate change, the actions we have taken are next to none in the world," Watson told the news agency on the sidelines of the conference. Watson said the US spends more than $5 billion a year on efforts to slow the deterioration of the earth's atmosphere by supporting climate change research and technology, and that Bush had committed to cutting greenhouses gases some 18 percent by 2012.

Also in this Edition: Briefly Noted…

Agence France Presse notes Liberia's new president-elect, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, will Tuesday visit Ivory Coast, followed by Guinea and Sierra Leone, making countries in the conflict-prone neighborhood a priority, officials said. " Ellen Johnson Sirleaf leaves Monrovia tomorrow for Abidjan where she will have talks with President Laurent Gbagbo," one official in the Liberian leader's entourage said, asking not to be named. The two "have to talk about the crisis in Ivory Coast and its consequences on the region, mainly Liberia," added the source. She will then travel on to Guinea and Sierra Leone. After visiting Liberia's west African neighbors, Sirleaf is due to head on for Nigeria, the country with the biggest military and political clout in the region. Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo currently chairs the African Union.

           
The Financial Times reports Roberto Lavagna, the economy minister who has led Argentina's rehabilitation in financial markets, was yesterday forced to resign, raising new doubts over the sustainability of the country’s economic recovery. Guillermo Nielsen, finance secretary, also stepped down yesterday, following Lavagna's resignation. Earlier this year he concluded the biggest sovereign debt re-structuring in history.

           
The Associated Press writes Honduras' governing party accused an electoral official of prematurely declaring wealthy landowner Manuel Zelaya the winner of the country's presidential election. But Aristides Mejia, president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, stuck by his announcement that the victor in Sunday's voting was Zelaya, an opposition candidate who has promised to fight corruption and crack down on gang violence in this impoverished Central American nation. The tribunal said Sunday night that Zelaya had 50.8 percent of the vote to 45.2 percent for Lobo Sosa, but it did not say on what proportion of the vote tally this projection was based, notes the news agency.

           
The Kuwait Times reports that about 30 Arab parliamentarians and experts from the World Bank and Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (Gopac) will start a two-day meeting in Kuwait Wednesday to discuss the role of Arab parliaments in combating corruption, organizers said yesterday. The meeting is hosted by the Kuwait Chamber of the Arab Parliamentarians Against Corruption (Apac) and Kuwait Society for the Protection of Public Funds. Apac president MP Nasser Al-Sane said the proposed strategy for combating corruption aims at adapting the World Bank's anti-corruption strategy in the Arab world in a bid to provide Arab lawmakers with a tool to fight corruption.

           
Agence France Presse reports pneumonia is spreading amongst cold and hungry children who survived Pakistan's giant earthquake, killing two and affecting hundreds more as the Himalayan winter sweeps in, officials said Tuesday. The United Nations begged the international community for extra help as it races against time to save millions of people threatened by disease and hypothermia because of the sudden change in the weather.

           
BBC News notes Sri Lanka and Indonesia must provide more appropriate land on which to build permanent shelter for survivors of last year's tsunami, aid charity Oxfam says. The appeal came as UN special envoy Bill Clinton arrived in Sri Lanka to review recovery work nearly a year on. Clinton is due to tour parts of the east coast devastated in the 26 December disaster, before heading to Indonesia on Wednesday. Oxfam said the Sri Lankan government had made land available but in some cases the land being offered was inappropriate - such as fishing communities being offered land too far away from the sea. As for Indonesia, the group said the government had not got policies in place to provide new land to the landless.

           
The Financial Times writes Vietnam's legislature yesterday adopted a long-awaited anti-corruption law that requires officials and their close relatives to declare their assets, as the ruling Communist party seeks to step up its battle against pervasive graft. Hanoi's communist authorities are intensely concerned that corruption could erode the party's legitimacy in the eyes of the population. Even as the authorities express concern about corruption, they are adopting new laws that will increase the government's discretionary authority to license and register businesses and projects, widening opportunities for graft.

           
Reuters reports a retired senior police officer has been appointed to take over Zambia's anti-corruption task force, the government announced on Tuesday, despite widespread public pressure for his predecessor to stay in the job. Max Nkole replaces Mark Chona, whose 3-year contract ended last month, President Levy Mwanawasa's office said. Mwanawasa declined to renew Chona's term to protests from aid donors, human rights groups and newspapers who said Chona had led the government's anti-graft campaign with distinction.

           
The Wall Street Journal writes growing opposition within the United Nations is threatening to derail US efforts following the oil-for-food scandal to remake the institution as a more effectively managed and less corrupt body. The conflict will come to a head in coming days in a fight over the UN budget. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns said the Bush administration won't sign off on the $3.6 billion UN budget for 2006-2007, due for approval by month's end, if Washington doesn't see greater progress in implementing management and operational changes endorsed by a September UN summit.           

           
AP German Worldstream and The Financial Times Deutschland (Germany) note former World Bank President James Wolfensohn will be awarded Thursday Germany’s First Class Federal Merit Cross. Wolfensohn is honored for his services to multilateral development. Under his presidency, the World Bank became one of Germany’s most important partners in the search for new strategies against world poverty, the news agency notes.

           
Dow Jones reports Group of Seven finance chiefs are likely to discuss China's foreign exchange policies when they meet in London over the weekend, a senior Japanese Ministry of Finance official said Tuesday. "Our counterparts in the US have said China's currency reform will be discussed at the G7 meeting as part of an overall debate on foreign exchange," the MOF official told reporters. The G7 finance ministers and central bank governors are also expected to discuss rising crude oil prices, foreign exchange markets overall and global interest rate movements, he said. The G7 meeting will be held a day after the European Central Bank's policy meeting on Dec. 1, when the central bank is widely expected to increase rates by 25 basis points from a historically low 2 percent. The Federal Reserve is also expected to raise key interest rates by a quarter point to 4.25 percent when its policy board next meets on Dec. 13.

           
Donald Johnston, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, writes in an opinion piece in The Financial Times that his time at the OECD has convinced him that the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations and other ad hoc bodies may decline because, as currently constituted, they have no substantive and permanent analytical underpinning. “There is potential for the OECD to provide a permanent underpinning and an established follow-up mechanism for these gatherings of senior politicians. Now that our member governments are investing in an enlarged and renovated OECD site in Paris, what better use could be made of it than to be the home to the G8, G20, L20 and other groupings that may emerge in future?” he asks.

           
BBC News reports Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's government has been ousted in a no-confidence vote. Canada's three opposition parties united against his Liberal Party, which has been mired in a corruption scandal. Martin will seek the dissolution of parliament on Tuesday, and a date for a general election - thought likely to be 16 or 23 January.