With much blaming and shaming the Western Trade Ministers and media announce the most recent collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s current attempt to reach agreement on the so-called Doha Development Round of Trade. (They have been trying to negotiate an agreement for more than seven years!)

Women worldwide, as individuals and through the Women’s Movement, have expended enormous personal and professional energy to ensure that the issues of women in development were addressed in major institutions, such as the World Bank, the UN and all its agencies, and in development organizations both governmental and private. However, despite these advances, gender inequalities persist across all societies and in all institutions and sectors. A kind of gender fatigue has set in among many advocates and institutions, which prompts the central question of this article: Why has gender remained such a difficult issue in the international NGO development community?

This power point presentation with reference to Catholic Social Teaching critiques globalization through three lens: globalization as a new perception of space relations, as global economic integration and as an economic doctrine. It concludes with alternative directions to pursue to bring about a more just future.

Many involved in the debate around the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) come to the table promoting the idea that the agreement will, as the agreement's preamble states, "create new opportunities for economic and social development in the region." But is that really the case?"