GLOBAL COOPERATION NEWSLETTER
April 2010
In this edition
2010 Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development
South-South Cooperation: The Same Old Game or a New Paradigm?
Why does the USA spend so much more on health than other countries?
United Nations Social Work Day -28 March 2010
UN Civil Society Network
International Social Work (ISW) Journal
World Bank Social Development Notes
International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) publications
UNRISD Papers
The Least Developed Countries Report 20092010 Joint World Conference on Social Work and Social Development: The AgendaRegistrations have hit 2,500 which exceed the expectations of the Hong Kong hosts and the conference
owners - International Association of Schools of Social Work, International Federation of Social Workersand ICSW.
Discussion is now occurring with speakers who are preparing their papers. The conference includes
important reflections as well as looking to the future. A speaker from Uruguay will reflect on neoliberalism as it impacted on Latin America and damaged social inclusion. China is intriguing to many ofus so this will be the opportunity to hear of developments in that country which has a vast andexpanding welfare sector. There is much, much more that you can see on the conference website.
ICSW acknowledges the contribution of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland to enable key civilsociety participants from Africa and South Asia to attend the conference.
The idea of the joint world conference has been a success. It has placed great demands on thesecretariats of IASSW, ICSW and IFSW but it is bringing together some of the most influential people insocial welfare, social work and social development.
Visit the website to see what you will be missing if you do not register and attend www.swsd2010.org.
After the conference concludes on 14th June the ICSW General Assembly meets. The day after (15thJune) the newly elected Board of ICSW meets.

South-South Cooperation: The Same Old Game or a New Paradigm?
The International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) has launched its new Poverty in Focus
magazine which presents eleven innovative articles discussing the current state-of-art of South-SouthCooperation, perspectives for the future and their development impact and the growing presence of theemerging countries in the international cooperation scenario. A central issue raised in the magazine iswhether South-South cooperation represents a chance for re-shaping the cooperation practice anddiscourse, putting at the centre the development needs and challenges of the countries in ourdeveloping world.

Download the magazine at: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCPovertyInFocus20.pdf.
Featured articles:• How did we get here? The pathways of South-South Cooperation, by Michelle Morais de Sá eSilva• In Between a Rock and Hard Place: LDCs in a G20 World, by Paul Ladd
• South-South Cooperation: Potential Benefits for the Least Developed Countries, by KamalMalhotra
Global Cooperation NewsletterPage 1••••••••Post-Liberal Regionalism: S-S Cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean, by Antonio
Sanahuja’s
The Challenges Confronting South-South Trade, by Aileen Kwa
South-South Cooperation: Moving Towards a new Aid Dynamic, by Penny Davies
Beyond Best Practices, by Francisco Simplico
IBSA: South-South Cooperation or Trilateral Diplomacy in World Affairs? by Daniel FlemesSouth-South Relations: Sino-African Engagement and Cooperation, by Hayley Herman
South-South Cooperation in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone, by Herbert McLeod and Fatmata Sesay
KebbaySouth-South Cooperation: The Same Old Game or a New Paradigm? by Melissa Andrade.

Why does the USA spend so much more on health than other countries?
This submission by the OECD to the US Senate Select Committee on Aging is a very clear and insightful
discussion on the financing of US health care. While we all know that American health care is expensive
this paper adds to our understanding of why. The paper discusses why the government spends more on
health than nearly anything else; and why this level of spending is nothing to do with ageing and healthstatus. It identifies key cost drivers including the cost of same-day surgery which is high and growing
rapidly. Pharmaceutical prices are 30-50% higher than in the rest of the OECD and hospital services areparticularly expensive. Physicians are paid significantly more than in other countries. Administrative
costs are high. www.oecd.org/dataoecd/5/34/43800977.pdf

UN Civil Society Network
UN Under-Secretary-General Sha Zukang (keynote speaker in Hong Kong) has advised ICSW that theNGO Branch of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) is responding
to the need to engage with NGOs worldwide on a wide range of issues on the United Nation’s
development agenda. To help this engagement UNDESA has created a knowledge-based, open
networking platform called CSO Net - the Civil Society Network. The aim is to: share and promote
best practices in the field of economic and social development; establish innovative and collaborative
development solutions; facilitate partnerships among the users of the portal; and promote interactive
discussions through online forums on issues of immediate relevance to the UN’s agenda. This portal canbe accessed at http://www.un.org/ecosoc/csonet.

International Social Work (ISW) Journal
Sage publications have sent ICSW, a partner in the ISW journal, the results for 2009. Downloads
reached 113,841, up 18% from 2008. This compares favourably with the average number (90,000) ofdownloads for SAGE social work and social policy journals. The most-downloaded article in 2009 wasCree, V.E. ‘Confronting sex trafficking: lessons from history’ (published Nov 2008) with 1,671 full-text
downloads. The number of registrants for the “tables of content alert” reached 4,545 by the end of2009. You can sign up for this service by going to: http://isw.sagepub.com/current.dtl.
The most-cited article published since 2002 is Hare, I. ‘Defining social work for the 21st century - The
International Federation of Social Workers' revised definition of social work’ (published in 2004) with 20citations.
On circulation, consortia access increased to 1,784 institutions in 2009, there were 476 traditional
library subscriptions in 2009. Developing world sales mean that 3,500 institutions have access to ISW
at no or low cost.

World Bank Social Development Notes
The World Bank has a series of interesting short papers on various social development subjects. Recentones include: Forced displacement and Making societies more resilient to violence – a conceptual
framework for the conflict, crime and violence agenda. More information at
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTSOCIALDEVELOPMENT/0,,contentMDK:2229
1659~menuPK:1304620~pagePK:210058~piPK:210062~theSitePK:244363,00.html.

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United Nations Social Work Day
Helen Clark of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) called on social workers to speak
up and get involved with the UN agendas and tochallenge inequality and injustice.
‘There are so many complementarities and synergies
between the UN agenda and the work of socialworkers; we must find better ways to work together’,said Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), the third mostsenior person in the UN structure and the most seniorwoman. She was speaking to 400 social workers andsocial work students at the annual UN Social WorkDay on 29 March 2010.
Right to left: Helen Clark (head of the UN
Development Programme), Gary Bailey(Commissioner of the IFSW Policy Advocacyand Representation Commission),
Fiona Robertson (IFSW Treasurer)

Helen Clark urged social workers and theirorganisations to become more involved in advocacy,
campaigning to challenge inequality and injustice. ‘It
is clear that no change in the world is likely to happen
by relying on governments alone. The UN has toactively link with the movers and shakers who makethings happen, including the professionals on theground. This must include the social workers who are
working at local community level.
Helen Clark referred to the huge challenges facing theworld to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
There have been improvements but the world is along way from achieving these goals. She commented
that social workers are playing a major role insupporting work to achieve the MDGs.
The session was opened by Christian Rollet (ICSWPresident), David N Jones (IFSW President) and Helle
Strauss (Secretary, IASSW).

They spoke about the determination of the three global organisations to work in partnership to ensurethat the messages from social work and social development practice are brought together to develop a
new social agenda for the next decade.
On the days before UN Social Work Day the Presidents and Executive Directors of IASSW, IFSW andICSW met to plan the 2010 conference in Hong Kong and the 2012 joint world conference in Stockholm.
Already the call for bids for the 2014 conference is underway - bids close in May. The threeorganisations are committed to “The Agenda” process which starts in Hong Kong. ICSW’s key agenda isthe Social Protection Floor Initiative.

International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) publications
Low-Cost technologies toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals: the case of rainwater
harvesting, by Christian Lehmann, Raquel Tsukada and Acácio Lourete, highlights the contribution of alow-cost water supply strategy for a number of the MDGs. Available from:http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCPolicyResearchBrief12.pdf.
Green jobs for the poor: why a Public Employment approach is needed now, prepared by Maikel LieuwKie-Song and Radhika Lal. This one-pager outlines an economic rationale for promoting types of “greenjobs” and the case for adopting a “public employment” approach in this regard. http://www.ipcundp.org/pub/IPCOnePager105.pdf.
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Trends in South-South Cooperation, by Michelle L. Chang discusses the trends and pressing issues in
the context of South-South Cooperation and one pagers.
http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePager103.pdf.
Sustainable Agriculture: way out of food poverty, by Tuya Altangerel highlights lessons from various
developing countries. http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePager104.pdf.
Assessing Administrative Capacity and Costs of Cash Transfer Schemes in Zambia
Author: Dennis Kaputo Chiwele Series: Country Study # 20
Download: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCCountryStudy20.pdf
Book: Collection of “One Pagers”. Author: International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG)
Series: One Pagers. Download: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePagerBook.pdf.
In response to popular demand, the IPC prepared this book which contains the ninety-nine ‘One Pagers’
produced by the Centre. http://www.ipc-undp.org.

UNRISD Papers
Migration and Poverty: Linkages, Knowledge Gaps and Policy Implications.
This paper explores the links between migration and poverty and their implications for social policy. It
argues that research on linkages between migration and poverty can, and should, start with knowledge
about poverty itself: what it is, what causes it, what reduces it, poor people’s agency as well as
constraints, and so on. Cut and paste URLhttp://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BF3C2/setLanguageCookie?OpenAgent&langcode=en&url=/80256
B3C005BCCF9/search/82DCDCF510459B36C12575F400474040?OpenDocument
Claiming and Framing in the Making of Care Policies: The Recognition and Redistribution ofCare. This paper seeks to understand how care policies are shaped. It looks at the dynamic between
how constituencies make care claims and the ways in which care policies are constructed and deliveredin different national, regional and historical contexts. The focus is mainly on child care policies forworking parents in Europe, but the purview also includes policies for disabled people and unpaid carers.
Cut and paste URLhttp://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BF3C2/setLanguageCookie?OpenAgent&langcode=en&url=/80256
B3C005BCCF9/search/3142494FBCFE632FC12575F50029211D?OpenDocument
Business, Corporate Responsibility, and Poverty
This paper was prepared by Michael Blowfield, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Smith
School of Enterprise and the Environment, Teaching Fellow in corporate responsibility at London
Business School, and Visiting Professor in corporate responsibility at Middlesex University Business
School. Cut and paste URLhttp://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BF3C2/setLanguageCookie?OpenAgent&langcode=en&url=/80256
B3C005BCCF9/search/2E9F30F0CB36323BC12575E000295B2F?OpenDocument

The Least Developed Countries Report 2009
The UNCTAD Civil Society Outreach Team has released the UNCTAD LDC report 2009, or follow the link:
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/WebFlyer.asp?intItemID=4955&lang=1.
The content of this Global Newsletter may be freely reproduced or cited provided the source isacknowledged. Views do not necessarily represent policies of ICSW. Newsletter Editor: Denys Correll,
Executive Director.
ICSW C/- MOVISIE Netherlands Centre for Social Development
PO Box 19129
3501 DC Utrecht
Netherlands
Website www.icsw.org Email: icsw@icsw.org
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