Leaders on both sides of a long-running civil war agreed to a second-chance peace agreement in Colombia and dozens of heads of state joined the dialogue at a key climate conference in Morocco. But there was disturbing news out of Egypt, where parliament passed a new law that cracks down on NGOs. This week in development news.
The Egyptian Parliament passed a bill to regulate nongovernmental organizations on Tuesday that opponents and human rights watchers say will dramatically limit the ability of NGOs to work in the country. The bill, which will still need to go through a final approval, would require NGOs to get permission to conduct fieldwork and polls or to work with “any international body;” NGO activity would be restricted to development and social work; and foreign NGOs would need to be overseen by a regulatory agency. It also introduces greater penalties for violations in the law, including jail sentences of up to five years.
Dozens of heads of state arrived in Marrakech for the "high-level" segment of the COP22 climate conference. This conference — the follow-on to COP21, which saw the successful negotiation of the Paris agreement — has put an emphasis on tackling "operational" issues within that historic framework. Negotiators are focusing on how countries should record and report the actions they are taking at home, what needs to happen to scale up ambition in the short term, and — critically — what kinds of resources developed countries will contribute to help developing countries confront the climate impacts they're already experiencing. Donald Trump's election as the next U.S. president has cast a cloud of uncertainty over what role, if any, the United States will play in these talks for the next four years. But other countries are clear: they do not need the American president's blessing to invest in low-carbon technologies or implement programs to safeguard against climate risks. Financing remains the stickiest issue in Marrakech — developing countries want to see more public money — and it's not likely to get resolved in the next two days.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
