Historically, China had prior experience in interacting with Africa. In the first half of 15th Century, Admiral Zhen reached Madagascar already with his fleet of “treasure boats”. Traders from the neighboring countries and dominions joint the fleet in order to benefit from the trading opportunities. This was the first official trade mission by the Chinese Ming Emperor. Such missions continued for more than 15 years and came to a halt. The Belt and Road Initiative is a systematic effort of the Chinese government to foster a stronger economic and political link with its neighbours in the Southeast Asia and beyond reaching the shore of Africa once again. In the geopolitical context of the post cold war period and the accelerated economic and technological catching up by China, such a concerted effort like BRI is causing concerns and anxieties in many quarters. Wherever there is a Chinese international trade policy, Chinese companies follow. Interactions with the host countries, either the community or the labour force or suppliers, is achieving mixed results.
Raymond Saner; University of Basel & Lichia Yiu; CSEND, Geneva
Paper and Presentation given during the 6th Conference of “Regulating for Decent Work” (RDW) on Living Wages and the Sustainable Development Goals: Workers’ Well-being in the Context of Employment and Costs of Living
ILO, Geneva, July 2019
The 2030 Agenda focuses on employment and decent work for all. SDG 8 was listed as one of the thematic topics of the 2019 High Level Political Forum in July 2019 in New York. All member countries of the United Nations were invited to present their implementation of the SDGs in general and of SDG 8 in particular. This paper and this presentation proposed to shed light on SDG 8 and how this goal relates to Living Wage.
Raymond Saner, Amaka Uchegbu and Lichia Yiu; 2019
The current regulatory environment of significance to the PMSC industry is ambiguous as a result of porous legal boundaries and incongruent policies due to competing political and judicial systems: national, regional, and international. Accordingly, it is essential to consider how ambiguities could be reduced and turned into legal certainty through both hard and soft law to prevent human rights abuses.
Climate Warming continues and the increase in world temperature has reached alarming heights. Taking into account the warning of the great majority of scientists, there is real risk that keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is seriously in jeopardy and countries have to do much more to honour their commitments given at the Paris Agreement. Business as usual that is publically confessing good intentions (fighting climate change) while at the same time insisting on conventional IP protection needs to be reassessed and solutions be found at the coming HLPF to accelerate the use of renewable energy sources across the globe for the benefit of all.
A recurrent problem in international organizations is the disappearance of institutional history and knowledge. The same can be said about international agreements unless the same key drafters/negotiators are involved in subsequent agreements which is rarely the case. This study provides an example how institutional memory embedded in international agreements can be preserved for the benefit of the next generation of policy negotiators. Hence, as a contribution to the broader reflection on how to align National Sustainable Development Plans with the implementation plan of 2030 Agenda, the purpose of the study is to present a comparative analysis of the 2030 Agenda with 6 outcome documents that were negotiated and agreed by the UN member countries in the domain of sustainability. This analysis aims to identify issues not covered or “unfinished business” in the 2030 Agenda and addressed in a more comprehensive manner or from different perspectives. The list of agreements and outcome documents included are Agenda 21, Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, Outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, The Paris Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development.
- Lichia Yiu & Raymond Saner, 2018, “Business Diplomacy in Implementing the Global 2030 Development Agenda: Core Competencies needed at the at the Corporate and Managerial Level
- The measuring and monitoring of human trafficking
- Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu, “Lack of semi-skilled workers in Switzerland: Opportunities for Refugees and Migrants? in Book titled « les questions migratoires et l’Agenda 2030 »
- “Intersectoral Coordination of Decent Work in the Context of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP): Lessons learnt for the SDGs”