The big news this update of course, is that New Zealand won its bid to be on the UN Security Council. Not only won, but won on the first round with 145 votes. This is a great achievement. Congratulations are due to all those involved over the past decade, not least the hard-working civil servants toiling behind the scenes.

In the lead-up to the Security Council vote Minister McCully gave an evocative speech to the UN General Assembly in which he opened with pointed comments about how New Zealand is a country of action, not words.

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Given just how acute New Zealand’s own governance issues have been revealed to be in the last few weeks, it feels distracting to focus on international development and the woes of other countries. Yet — in addition to having written to the World Bank imploring them to send TA in the direction of our government (ideally in the form of ethicists) — we have some goodies for you.

The Social Dimensions of Inequality in the Pacific
In the lead up to next month’s Small Islands Developing States conference in Apia, Associate Professor Yvonne Underhill-Sem has written an NZADDs commentary on social inequality in the Pacific.

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