The Global Development Team (GDT) is a network
of specialists pinpointing, researching and reporting on major
issues regarding global development and ultimately providing
assessments, recommendations, and strategies for intervention on
these targeted issues of development throughout the
world.
Activities and initiatives include, but are not limited to, the
following:
- Conduct research and consultations to assess
possible development issues in countries where the need is
highest
- Formulate projects and form relationships with
potential funders
- Conduct exploratory missions (assessing all
possible angles and meeting potential contacts and
collaborators)
- Organize specific research/investigation
missions (Identify expert(s), outline a communication
strategy, carry out mission, discuss follow up and modalities with
local contacts)
- Release findings (develop comprehensive
communication strategy, implement advocacy strategy through local
/regional/national/international contacts
- Continue to monitor the situation, maintain
sustainability (support contacts, according to needs and
resources)
- Evaluate mission and report to funders and key
stake-holders
Current Program on:
People, Development and Organized Crime
The Global Development Team intends to contribute to a better
understanding of organized crime and the fight against it by
producing academic research. It will gather data and stories and
then, in partnerships with other organizations, will take action on
specific situations by advocating with decision-makers and raising
public awareness.
Transnational organized crime has a negative impact in
practically every area of human development: democracy, governance,
justice, education, health, economic activity, social welfare,
gender, the environment and natural resources.
It feeds on earnings coming from drugs, trafficking women and
children, the illegal trade in arms and natural resources,
counterfeit medicines and cyber-criminality.
Organized crime also seeps into the legal economic activity of
every country, increasing the cost of services from public works to
garbage collection, and undermining free competition in the
business world. All of this results in higher costs for taxpayers
and consumers.
Organized crime also fuels corruption, as it reaches all levels
of society: political leaders, customs officers, law enforcement
officers, journalists, judges, doctors and NGOs have all been
implicated.
Transnational organized crime has become an obstacle to
democratic participation and sustainable development. Criminal
networks now establish bases in countries with weak governance
systems from which they reach into other countries and
continents.
The GDT’s human development perspective goes beyond the sphere
of legislation and law enforcement. It includes examining the
causes and conditions that allow organized crime activity to take
root, as well as its impact on development and the solutions that
can bring about change. Organized crime directly affects people,
and people have a role to play in the fight against it.
Other Current Projects Include:
- Counterfeit Medicines
- Human Trafficking
For more information on the Global Development Team and its
activities please contact the Director of the
GDT, Jacques Bertrand at centerforglobaldevelopment@stjohns.edu
Jacques Bertrand is the Director of the Global Development Team at
St. John’s Center for Global Development. He was formerly the head
of the Global Issues Department at a major international NGO based
in Rome where he was responsible for developing policy and
coordinating the advocacy work directed at the United Nations, the
World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International
Monetary Fund. He has since wrote for newspapers and magazines and
was a reporter for Canada’s public broadcasting system. Jacques
recently published a magazine focusing on development cooperation
between and Canada and Africa.